I still believe...

"So don't you think that the reason you are changing your beliefs about god is kind of selfish?"

My friend sat across from me in the cafe area of the church and said these words carefully as if to feel out whether or not the statement might set me off or hurt my feelings.  I considered the question and answered with the best response I could muster.

"It's all selfish isn't it?"  I meant to say that all pursuit of greater truth be it god or science or anything else is done with the self in mind.  If its a pursuit of god, then it might be for salvation sake, or for the sake of connecting with god as an individual.  There are definitely selfish reasons for it. That does not make the pursuit of god a bad thing though.

In  much the same way one does not read the classics in order to better the world or the people in it, but to better one's self -- to grow, to learn, to heal, to enrich your mind, to save your soul, to rescue you from evil or ignorance.   These are the reasons we pursue god, literature, science, spirituality and reason.

So the answer is yes, after a recent trip out of the country, I chose to believe in god based on a rather exclusive and subjective experience I had personally.  This decision is based on selfish observations. But that in and of itself does not disqualify the experience and choice from being relevant, meaningful and true for me.

The experience was deeply personal and it involved an answer to specific prayers, a felt sense of love by another person, an acceptance and welcoming from people I would not have expected a welcoming from, a confirmation of earlier beliefs going back to childhood, providence and protection and favor and good-timing and all of the other buzz words used to describe an interaction with god.

I would go into great detail on all of this, but I would like to refrain from over-sharing.  Let's suffice it to say that I came to see that god is real, and that god genuinely cares for people and their various plights for the sake of love and other. God showed me himself/herself/itself that night at Whataburger and I wanted nothing more to do with it.

But as they say, God aggressively pursues his people.  I was made to see and believe once again. Does that mean I have all the answers?  No, in fact I have more questions than ever.  Does it mean that god is right for you, or that I am trying to sell god to you or belief in god? Of course not, that kind of behavior irritates me when I see others do it.

What I am saying is this.  I believe in god. I choose to worship god in the context of the Christian experience because that is what I know best. Your beliefs are your beliefs and I respect that. I ask that you would do the same for me. Thanks for reading.

To be honest...

So again I was faced with new information and had to figure out the best way to deal with it.  I decided to continue to explore community.  I remember that I went to church the next week and really did not participate much.   I was there, but my head was somewhere else if you know what I mean.  I realized that to be honest with myself meant that indeed for whatever reason whether it meant my own mental departure from reality, the presence of a family ghost that would not leave me alone, or some other being that existed in the spiritual, I could not rely solely on my scientific explanation of things to inform me of all things that truly exist,

See, I set out on a personal journey about 11 years ago to pursue honesty, integrity, transparency and authenticity in my own life.  I was a Christian youth pastor at the time and up until then you might have called me a fake if you knew me well.  You would at least think that I had some sort of split personality if you knew me that well, but the truth is, barely anyone knew me that well.

I myself had a little trouble figuring out who I was back then.  I blame the church's approach to holiness doctrine mostly.  At least the church I had gone to prior to that.  It was a Nazarene church that subscribed to holiness as a way of life.  Sanctification, according to the church is a gift you receive shortly after becoming a believer that effectively seals you for work inside the kingdom of God.

So, once a person is sanctified, there is no turning back, they are now holy, set apart for all practical purposes. Except that after I declared my sanctification to the world around me at the tender age of 18, I didn't exactly feel any different. It was embarrassing.  Other members of my flock who received sanctification had become perfect models of Christianity, but me?  I was the same old John.  The same guy that made mistake after mistake and chose selfish behaviors over Jesus-like actions all the time.

So what did I do to remedy this?  I began acting holy.  I figured I could fake it until I made it, ya know? I mean I already knew the language of church, and the culture and what was expected of me. So I talked the talk and talked some more, never really able to walk the walk of true holiness.  That did not seem to matter to my Christian friends however. They accepted the "new" me and rewarded this behavior by giving me high-praise for my apparent piety.

It wasn't until I started going to a different church (The Vineyard in 2003) that people started calling me on my holy behavior. They asked me questions like "Why do you do that?"  They challenged me on things like art and music and culture in general.  One pastor pulled me aside and asked me point-blank why I only listen to Christian music.   I gave him the standard answer I had learned from my past and he seemed baffled.

This conversation led to other conversations whereby I started to pick apart the armor I had been wearing - that I myself had donned on a daily basis.  One article at a time came down and I began to realize that I used these concepts and actions that appeared holy merely to mask who I truly was inside -- that scared kid that had been mistreated by not only imaginary beasts and monsters in my childhood, but who had also been brutally mistreated in school by a number of bullies and at home by his own brother; that kid who had never been nurtured, loved, cared for; the one who had anger issues and bitterness towards men and women.  I had covered that kid up for so many years (since I was about 16) and did such a good job of it I was surprised when he actually surfaced.

He was even more angry than I could have imagined having been ignored for so long by me.  But I decided then and there I had to deal with him, nurture him and become more like him than the fake super-Christian I had created. This came as a bit of a shock to people who knew me before, but in 2004, I made an active decision to never be a fake again.  I would be who I was, who I was meant to be and if that rubbed people the wrong way, well then so be it.  I stepped down from ministry at the Vineyard and pursued authenticity and transparency full-time.

This also meant that I was questioning everything.  My faith, the way I talked and walked and thought. Everything was up for grabs, everything had to be reconsidered and evaluated. Nothing could be overlooked.  If I found I did anything one particular way because I wanted people to think I was something that I most certainly was not, I would strike it out of my life.

This period for me started back in 2004 and is still going on today.  It took me 38 years to become that way, and it will take many more years to weed out the false-piety I had grown so accustomed to. Because of the fact that this fake-self so impacted my life and because of all of the work I have done to recover from it, I have an aversion to anything that appears fake or phony when it comes to faith -- and there is a LOT of that going around.  A lot.  I will usually expose it for what it is when I see it for that reason.

So considering all of that, I have re-approached the subject of God very slowly.  And I refused to accept the blanket answers to things offered up by my fellow fakers and their predecessors.  I wanted to know the truth and I wanted to know now. What I guess I didn't realize is that there is no proof, no concrete anything, no way of showing the results, recording the findings.  God is subjective to everyone.

Ask anyone who claims to believe in god, and you will get differing accounts of god even within the same peer group of the same denomination of the same religion.  I had to either accept god's existence based on my own subjective observations (knowing full well I could not prove god to anyone and that I could just as easily be mistaken), or reject god's existence based on objective physical evidence alone.

More on this later...

God found me at the Whataburger drive-through

So there I was, feeling really smug in my new-found acceptance of the denial of God's existence. I had been going to a secular humanist community for a bit and had really enjoyed my time with these people.

Evangelical Test:  If the words "secular" and "humanist" just set off a red flag or loud alarm in your head, then you know you are deeply embedded in the evangelical/fundamentalist culture and way of thinking. I might as well have said a "Satanic, God-Hating" community -- right?  However, those words in and of themselves don't really describe anything bad.  The word "secular" merely means "non-religious", and the term "humanist" merely means "celebrating of humanity".  If you really think about it, Jesus fit both of these descriptions in his time here on earth. So don't knock it until you try it.

There was an honest approach to living that these folks had adopted that blows away most forms of community I have ever been involved with including the church.

There were atheists, agnostics and believers mixed in with this lovely group of people and they all seemed to get along fine, choosing to focus on topics of discussion that were scientific and educational in nature.  It was and still is a beautiful thing, and I am not done with those good people.

This particular evening however, I was coming home from an experimental group I belonged to.  We were getting together to try and see if we had what it took to form a quasi-religious, irreligious community of our own.  In my mind this community would be more open to issues of faith and might possibly be a blended group of believers and non-believers alike from all walks of faith and life.

The title of my message that I shared that evening was "Because the Greek philosopher told me so." This was an expose' of the Christian religion and how much of the ideas, patterns and theologies that we have adopted in our faith are not really found in the Bible, but are borrowed from Greek philosophy,

In the end, I found myself in a heated discussion with my friends that made me realize three things:

1.  I did not want to give up on the Bible, just the old ways of viewing scripture that were not entirely scriptural or considerate of the context in which it was written.

2.  I was not an atheist all the time.

3.  This experimental group would be short-lived for me, because I may have been the only advocate for the Bible as a reference.

One of the members argued that we should not even be using the Bible because it mentions things in scripture like justified rape and promotes slavery and misogyny.  I had very little to respond with except to say that we can't throw the baby out with the bath water.  All in all I was pretty disappointed in the end.  I felt that I had failed my friends and that I maybe even failed myself as a wanna-be atheist.  I was in deep thought about these things when I pulled up to the Whataburger drive-through.

My standard order? A number 2 with cheese, grilled onions, mayo instead of mustard, no pickles with a large Diet Coke.  As I rolled down my window on this balmy Summer's eve though, something strange happened.  No, I did not see a fiery chariot descend from the heavens with 14 faces and tongues of fire, sporting a goatee and a moderately large pair of Ray-ban reading glasses (I know you were thinking that).

I felt it.   You know what I mean by it?  Refer to this post if unsure (or just keep reading).  I felt that benevolent, parental presence surrounding my vehicle and enveloping all of the empty space between me and the world around me.  It was huge and powerful and overwhelming and I started to cry.

I was flabbergasted.  I was angry, and to be honest I felt a little crazy.  Like, why doesn't anyone else ever complain about feeling this presence in their lives?   Why do I have to be so damn aware of the thing?  What the hell is it?

I yelled out loud (in my mind) at the thing "leave me alone".

That's when I heard the voice.

It sounded a little garbled at first, and I had some trouble making out the words in the message, but once I recognized the sound of it's voice, I readily understood the meaning behind those words.  Here is my best interpretation of them.

"Welcome to Whataburger. Can I take your order?"

"Uh, yes, let me get a number 2..."

After talking to the nice lady over the small voice box I resumed my conversation with big and silent.

"I am trying to be an atheist. Would you leave me alone please?"

silence

"What in the hell are you anyway?"

nothing

I pulled up to the window and paid my 8 dollars or so and wondered why hamburgers costs so much and then the thing was gone as fast as it came.  It was like it was taunting me.  Staying barely in the margins, watching and waiting.  Always there, never completely gone.  It was as if the entity were waiting to be there for me, anxiously waiting to comfort me and watch over me like it did in years past.  But, I wanted nothing more to do with it.

I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous to some of my more intellectual friends (trust me I am right there with you), psychotic to those who are more in tune with mental health issues and down-right offensive to folks of faith, but I can't explain these encounters any better than to just say what I saw and describe what I felt.  I know that I risk appearing over or under spiritual. I know that this sounds like the ramblings of a mad man.   But, it is what it is.

I explained this encounter to a friend of mine from my community and she helped me to understand things better.  She said that being an atheist is not necessarily about denying that God exists.  There could very well be a god, or gods in our world, but if those beings do nothing for humanity, nothing for us in general, why waste time trying to get to know them or trying to understand them?

I truly appreciated her take on things and there is a lot of truth to what she told me.  In essence, if all God does is make me feel less afraid, but does not actually conquer evil, maybe I can do that on my own.  If all my god manages to do is help me sleep, why can't I just take a pill rather than to pay homage to the great unknown?

What good is a real God, if God does no real good?

More on this later...

I believe in God (but it's not what you might think)

I woke up scared out of my mind.  I remember that feeling like it was only yesterday.  Lying in bed afraid to move.  I adjusted only my eyes and looked around the room for any movement -- any indication that there was something there to get me -- steal me away in the night, eat me, devour me, kill me and take me away from my parents for good. 

The trees moved slowly outside rhythmically with the wind and I could swear I saw a shadowy finger brushing up against the window.  I could hear the tapping the finger made against the glass pane and it went right to my spine and seemed to irritate everything in my small system.  Listening and watching I determined that the finger was a branch from a tree, tapping away as the wind moved the tree and everything outside back and then forward. 

It was either that or some cruel beast playing tricks with me -- messing with my head, making my tiny heart race and my insides ache in fear.  Establishing that the windows were devoid of beast or entity, I took the risk of slowly moving my head towards the closet door.  I wasn't sure if I had left the door opened or closed, but either way the menacing entryway and cubby posed a threat. 

Closed the door could easily conceal a monster that would burst out at any moment to cover me in its immense size and darkness.  Open and the monster could be waiting within the recesses of the darkness within, waiting for the right moment to pounce.  Waiting until my guard was down,

I was 5 years old at the time, and this was a typical night in my childhood home.  I had been waking up regularly for days to this unimaginable fear of harm - fear of something supernatural at best that would be there the next time I awoke in darkness, be there to hurt me.  I was determined for a few days to just not fall asleep.  I figured if I remained awake, nothing could sneak up on me while I slept and therefore nothing bad could happen to me,

This particular night I remember praying.   I did not exactly know to who I was praying to, or to what, but I do remember praying.  I asked (god if you will) whatever benevolent presence I felt at the time to please just make the nightmares stop.  I implored the good of the universe to overshadow the evil that I felt was there to harm me.

I called out to the darkness and the emptiness of the great unknown and begged for a moments rest as a small child in my room that night. And to my small imagination and eager little heart I got an answer.

It was subtle at first.  The response I got back from the great unknown was a physiological one.  My body just started to calm down, my breathing slowed, my heart relaxed a bit and the tension in my belly eased.  My mind was still racing, and my eyes continued to scan the room, but I felt the presence of something really good in there with me.  Something strong, clean, and parental.

I closed my eyes and slept like a 5 year old for the first time in days.  The next night I uttered the same words to the same benevolent presence and got the same results.

Now, one could argue that my parents taught me about prayer or that Sunday school had taught me as much.  That paired with a child's immense imagination could have caused me to conjure up these feelings and the peace I felt, just as I had conjured up the feelings of fear and anxiety before.  But to me, in that room for that period of time, "God" became real.

As I grew older I learned to attach labels and names and categories and structures to this god-being. When I was a teenager, someone told me a story about Jesus and I thought that maybe, this good thing that I knew from childhood fit into the context of who Jesus was.

I mean he loved children. he stood up for the marginalized and the minority, and he confronted evils of all sorts.  So, it was just a natural thing for me to accept Christianity as my religion because well I had already experienced the goodness of God to comfort me and to chase away the bad.

Now as an adult, I have tried desperately to shake off those old ideas.  I have learned that maybe my god does not necessarily always fit the molds of Christianity, nor does it fit into most contemporary religions or understandings of God.  Maybe my god is no god at all, but the combined feelings of all on the planet who wish to do us well.  Maybe this comforting presence is a ghost of a family member long since gone from the world who has chosen to watch over me.  Maybe, it really is a god defined as good by most earthly well-intentioned religions.

I tried to be an atheist a few months back and I am sad to say that it didn't work out for me.  See I have a huge amount of respect for atheists.  I think it is because deep down, when I am honest about myself I have troubles reconciling this good god with a world in trouble.   I take issue with the descriptions that religion has constructed for God -- the excuses they have made for god's seemingly uninvolved, unconcerned, or unavailable approach to human suffering.   I take issue with believers who look and sound more like the evil presence I felt in my room than the loving, concerned and caring presence I felt back then and still feel today.

It's embarrassing to say I am Christian at times, knowing full well that others who use that label use it to bash people over the head with their own interpretations of the Bible or their own opinions and judgement about what is right or wrong.  It's a little infuriating to be honest.  I tried to run away from all of it, live in denial, steer clear of hatred in all of it's ugly forms.

More on this later...

Where am I?

It's a simple question if we are talking about mere geography, right?  Where am I?  Ask Siri and she would even give you an estimated address.  "Where am I" is a good question to ask when getting off of a city bus, in a strange town you've never been in if you are trying to get to a connecting bus or train or car. And it is usually easily answered by whomever local pedestrian you might ask.

But ask yourself "where am I?" to questions of faith, doubt, life, relationships, love, and emotion and the answers will vary from day to day for most.  Maybe even moment by moment.  It's only because we are human.   Human beings traditionally can be fickle, flippant, wishy-washy, doubtful, and undecided.  Add an anxiety or personality disorder to the mix and you will get varying results.

It makes one wonder if it is even worthwhile answering this question if the answer is just going to keep changing.   But, I still ask it.  I ask myself this question on a regular basis, and sometimes I even know the answer.  Sometimes, I am on a roll with answers, then I reach a plateau of sorts and land back into the mystery of unknowing.

When I am honest with myself (and that is pretty normal these days), I have to admit that I don't know as much as I should about life and love and faith and belief and science and things that are not so black and white.

But I do have personal knowledge of some things.

I know what it feels like to be loved.

I know what God feels like and that there is God.

I know that I have a long way to go to understand either of those two ideas.

I know that everyone else who has experienced these two ideas, is in the same boat as me.  There really are no experts in love or god.

Disagree?  Just look at all the books attributed to the subjects of love and God.  Think of all the different religions and all the different love stories.

Try to number the ways of belief found in your own religion.  Christianity for one is the most diverse of religions having over 43,000 denominations worldwide by some estimates.  It is incredibly pluralistic and varied.

To some that would seem to be a limitation.  They might even argue that Christianity is a farce because no one seems to agree on what it is.  I see it as a great advantage - an opportunity to learn and understand the god of Christianity from the view of 43,000 other vantage points.  Even within each denomination there are conservative groups and progressive groups, traditionalists and modernists, and even post-modernists.

This means that I can say right now with very little uncertainty that I am in fact a Christian.  And really, no one can argue with me about it.   It also means that there is room to grow and grasp and move and stretch and learn and study and teach and converse about the many varied approaches to god found in the one religion.

So where am I?

1.  I believe in God
2.  I am a Christian
3.  I know love first hand.

More on this later.

Everything I need to know about God, I learned from Mom and Dad

This Sunday in church we were all tasked to remember a time when we received a surprising, extravagant gift.  It was a simply task of recall that struck me like a swinging baseball bat right in the heart.

As I sat there trying to remember, the following story came rushing back into my mind as if stored there for a long time and waiting to pounce at this exact moment.  And it did pounce. Everyone's eyes were mostly closed at this point and I was pretty grateful, because I probably looked a lot more devastated than I did overwhelmed with happiness, gratitude and emotion.

I turned 18 at the end of my senior year on May 5 -- Cinco de Mayo, 1984.  Graduation was still to come, but most of the work was done. So there I was in my bedroom winding down after a long day at school.  This year had been my best year ever and so I remember being happy a lot back then.

I was sporting a pretty hard-core mullet with streaks of blonde hair running through my all-too-dark mane.  It worked well with the rock-star image I was trying to project.  I wore glasses back then as well and had overcome a lot of self-esteem issues because of them.  Lately though I was feeling more in control - more confident and more appreciated.

My Mom and Dad who had been working that day had just returned home and I could hear them moving around in the house beyond my room.  Within the next few minutes I was being summoned by my mother to join them in the kitchen.  I figured that we would firm up our plans for the evening's festivities.  We always eat as a celebration for birthdays.  Well, we eat and we hang out together.  Two of the more significant activities that seemed to solidify our little family over the years.

I crawled out of my bed and stretched a bit before leaving my room and walking down the hall towards the kitchen. There they were.  Mom and Dad were both standing in the middle space between hallway and kitchen and each had a goofy look on their face.

"Yes?"

"Happy birthday" Mom said with a sly smile.

"Oh, thanks"  I looked at Dad as he was handing me something across the space between me and Mom.  I reached out to grasp it's handle.

It was a hard case, plastic with a handle in the shape of...  a... guitar.  It had the word Ovation written in chromish colored font in one corner.  I set it down on a chair and looked back at Dad.  

He smiled back at me, "Open it."

I undid the first few buckles that kept the lid secure and pulled up on the case only to realize I missed a buckle in back.  So I leaned over and unsnapped the last hasp and pulled up on the lid anxiously.

There it was.  Sitting inside the case surrounded by felt was this beautiful, amazing guitar.  It was colored with oranges, yellows and browns in a sunburst pattern and had a new set of strings on it. I just stood there staring.  How, what...   

I looked back at Mom dumbfounded.

"Well, take it out.  Play it."

I reached into the case and grabbed the neck of the guitar and pulled it out.  It had a solid feel to the narrow performance neck of the thing.  I strummed a few chords and my eyes began to get moist.

"Like it?"  Dad asked.

"How?  I.."

"It's yours.  Happy Birthday. I bought this from a customer.  It's electric too."

I adjusted the knobs installed on the guitar.  It was phenomenal.  I had been playing guitar since I was about 5 years old and until that moment I had always played cheap guitars purchased from Mexico for about 50 dollars at most.

I was always interested in music, but in High School I actually found out that I was good at it. I had started going to church kind of late in life at about 16, and there they asked me to play the guitar all the time, but I didn't have a guitar.  I had to borrow the youth pastor's guitar to play.

My parents had purchased a professional instrument for me on my birthday.  I had no idea at the time what this gift meant and how it would impact me until much later in life.  

The Anti-Message

Up until that point I thought that I had seen and heard glimpses of God, but that it mostly came from the church I was attending.  I had literally spent hours studying the Bible and reading stories and sections of it.  Once I discovered church, it was the thing that I did all the time.  Every Sunday and Wednesday and every time in between I was there learning and praying and witnessing and discussing scriptures.

In fact I spent so much time at church, my Mom and Dad had to sit me down and ask me to take it easy.  They said I was spending too much time there.  What I did not realize is that they were asking me to spend more time with them.  The sad part about it is that even if they asked me point blank back then to please spend more time with them, I would have continued to go to church every time the doors were open.

You might think that is good.  If so, you are wrong.  I missed out on a LOT because of church. This is just one of the things that it impacted.  Anyway, amidst all the game playing and hanging out with church friends and laughing and praying for each other there was something else going on.  A sort of "anti-message" that was being preached over and again in my head.

The anti-message had a lot to do with rules, and crucifixion and judgement and Hell and eternal punishment and discipline and conviction and sin and submission, even unforgivable sin and death and an angry god.  The two main messages I heard said this "I am an all loving Father God that wants to take care of you forever."  Then there was this "If you don't like me or want anything to do with me though, I will abandon you to torture and death forever -- no second chances, no mercy ever."

I literally soaked in the love of God in those early years.  I took every opportunity I could to feel that love and live in it from the first message.  But the other message, I avoided it like the plague. Deep down I always doubted that that was actually God.  I mean, they preached that message way more than the other.  You might even say we were brain washed to believe in death and punishment.  But there was this nagging piece of reality in my mind and heart that said "not true" every time I heard the anti-message.

I usually ignored it.  Years later I realized that the voices that said "not true" sounded exactly like my Mom and Dad.

The Gift

So how significant was this gift? Let me elaborate a bit on my upbringing.  My Mom and Dad were really self-made people by this point in their lives.  Everything they had -- the cars, the house, the ability to buy me a 500 dollar guitar on my birthday --  they had worked really hard for.

They did not have well-off parents, a trust to rely on, people in their life to send them to college or support them otherwise.  They had each other, and a lot of hard work way before I ever came along.

So my Dad did what he could to provide for us while Mom stayed home with the kids (all four of us) until it didn't make sense for her to do that.  Dad sometimes worked three different jobs during this time.  What do you think they wanted for me?

When I was a bit younger I was all excited about being a barber one day, just like Dad, but NO. They would not have that. They wanted me to go to college, graduate and get a professional job somewhere and not have to worry and work as hard as they did.  It was a simple request, especially considering what it is they had done to get me there.

They really wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or do some other career that promises financial security.  What did I want to do?  I wanted to be the next Amy Grant (excluding gender of course).  I was going to be a musical performer and had signed up for college to go and do that.

I was pumped full of confidence by my high school peers and felt like I really had what it took to do music for a living.  My parents, supported me.  They supported my crazy ideas so well, they were willing to put up the money to buy me a real professional instrument.  They even offered to pay for college and let me stay at their lake house while I went to school.  They paid for everything -- school, gasoline, meals, lodging.

I remember that semester at college.  I made a lot of realizations then.  One, I am not a super-star. There are hundreds of people, if not thousands that sing and play better than me and even seem to have a natural ability for it.  My first day at college pretty much inundated me with that sort of knowledge.  In High School I was a super-star, but in college I was a nobody Freshman.

The other thing I realized was that my parents were losing weight.  They both were working so much they did not hardly have time to eat at home and so the kitchen cupboards were empty.  The refrigerator - empty.  I began to realize that they were sacrificing everything for me, including their own well-being.  They were putting it all on the line for their college bound son - their super-star. 

I dropped out of school after the semester was over much to their utter disappointment. I then soon joined the Air Force and left home and got married.  There was a lot of confusion about those last few months at home -  a lot of pain and hurt and things unsaid.  The hardest part for me was telling my parents that I was not going to school anymore.  They worked so hard to get me there and I failed them.  I felt like there was nothing I could do to gain their confidence back and their trust and so I left - a failure.

I was so wrong.  I had never lost their confidence - never lost their trust.  They loved me so much and I could not even see it.  They would have done anything for me - anything.  These two people know how to love.

I was ill-equipped to receive it.  See I had applied what I knew about God, the anti-message to my parents.  In my mind, I had done the unforgivable sin.  I failed and I rejected my parent's ways ultimately turning my back on them.  What did Mom and Dad do?  Did they banish me to some form of hell - an eternity of punishment?  Did they judge me as too far gone -- did they turn their back on me because they could not look upon me as a sinner?

Hell no.  They began to slowly embrace me for my new decisions.  They supported everything I chose to do whole heartedly.  They told me over and again how proud they were of me.  The accepted the new John, and then the next version of John and the next.  To this day we cannot have one conversation about politics or religion, but I know that they love me, and they tell me all the time that they are so proud of me.

The gift of the guitar was their way of saying, "no matter what you decide to do, we are 100% behind you boy.  We loved you when you were born and when you wanted to hang out with us all the time.  We love you when you want absolutely nothing to do with us, and we love you now and always.  You cannot escape our love for you, even when you reject us. Go and do your music son, and do it well.  We are so proud of you."

Everything I need to know...

This is how God must feel about his creation.  This is who God is.  Not some angry, egotistical giant, waiting to pounce on you because you rejected him or her.  Not some people-programmer in the sky that demands you follow his will and his will only regardless of your desires.  Not some hopeless lover that cries at the loss of another human-being somehow as much a victim of sin and the consequences of it as his own creation.  God is a Father.  God is a Mother.  God is so proud of you.

My Indie Faith

In case you have not been paying attention I have not written anything in some time.  I think that is because at some point my "faith," though it is independent (indie), has been through hell lately. I mean that in a good way.  :)

So when a person's "faith" goes through such a thing, they don't usually talk about it until most of the hectic parts are over.  Talking about things like this in the midst of the hell is a little bit difficult because well, you don't really know what to say.  

How could you speak definitively about something that is forever changing to you and for you? So I have backed off from talking about faith and my faith particularly until I know more about what I know about the subject.

Yes, and as luck would have it, I am through a significant transitional period in my faith and on the other side of that.  FINALLY!   GEEZ!   Sorry for my exclamations, but man that was a confusing part of my life.  Anyone else?  Any of you going through that right now, have gone through it, considering going through it?

See in order to have a faith transition, you have to be open.  Well, scratch that.  I think a better way of thinking about it is you have to be sick of the bull shit.  It usually starts by being drawn to authenticity in your life.  You could call it a pursuit of truth -- not just some exploration of what truth is for the experts (pastors, philosophers, gurus, etc.), but what is the truth for you.  What is true to you?

No, I am not talking about circumstantial truth or selective truth or anything like that.  I am not talking about my truth or your truth, but the truth. What is true for everyone. Not just the narrow-minded faith-talking Jesusy people.  What can we agree on when it comes to the subject -- all of us?

If what we collectively can agree upon is considered the truth, then to me, it has to be true.  

But, what about God?  Well, God does not look at all like the Christians, Muslims, Jews, or other religious groups define him/her/it to be when we look at God in those terms -- if God exists at all.

BUT (<-- and this is a big but), If God does exist, then religion for me becomes something completely different than it used to be.  Religion now becomes man's attempt to explain the unknown. AND GOD DOES NOT FAULT US FOR NOT KNOWING -- no matter how often you are threatened, shamed, harassed, shunned, or ignored by the religious.  All religions then have some truth in their writings, some information we could all gain from, some element of God.

All religions have a lot of crap - baggage if you will.  All religions have the capacity to snuff out the life of a believer -- completely crush others, or allow a believer to blossom and grow  -- love others immensely.

Some religions have done a fantastic job at explaining the unexplainable, some atheists are doing a better job of it.  But what atheism and religion have in common is the fact that some very intelligent and enlightened people have taken an exorbitant amount of time thinking and talking and writing and reading about God or the absence of God.  

So then my job as a "believer" is to explore all of that.  Seek the truth.  If I am on this journey to pursue the knowledge of God, then I can't go wrong can I? 

In the Bible, Paul's last advice to the Thessalonians goes like this:

 "19Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. 20Do not scoff at prophecies, 21Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good."  (I Thessalonians 21, NLT)

In order to truly DO this.  In order to take that advice, we have to actually LISTEN to other "prophecies".

I hope to be able to write more about how I came to this conclusion and how my whole life has been full of the life of God and light and darkness.  I hope to also make it interesting.