Practicing doubt

Being called to the Christian faith is a royal pain in the hide.  Especially for a person who was born and raised atheist, or at the least, agnostic.  All my life I have surrounded myself with people who were like me, raised without faith, or people who lost it somewhere along the way.  We were a pretty choir, all singing the same songs with the same vehemence.  It's so freaking EASY to be anti-Christian as a young. West coast, progressive person.  It's endemic in our piece of American culture and I think it's growing, viral-like, to consume half the hearts of this nation.  The other half have to resist in the only way they know how - with unthinking adherence to whatever belief system seems most unassailable - fundamentalist Christianity.  That one is a belief system so unreal, so beyond the realm of common sense and even most people's experience of God, of Christ that it's somehow easier to grasp for people who see their way of life rapidly disintegrating.

But god, is it embarassing for the rest of us.  These people!  I see the pure beating hearts in their chests.  I see the pain in their eyes.  I understand their worry, their fear.  But, it's embarassing.  Please!  Process with your therapist or something - don't do it in public!  There ought to be a law.  ;) 

For people who don't have an inroad into the faith, fundamentalism is all they see of Christianity.  Whatever else they do see they paint with that brush.  That's what I saw, that's what I did.  So coming to the faith was very, very hard and it continues to be a royal pain in the... well... you get it.

So sometimes I ignore God.  For like weeks.  Just ignore the hell out of the whole concept.  It's almost blissful, to ignore that gnawing feeling, to ignore the small but insistent voice in my head.  In the way that sometimes watching the snowy static on a television screen can be comforting when you've not slept for 40 hours and your mind is racing a million miles a second.  Or is that just me?  Either way - it's somehow satisfying.  Like disobeying a direct order.  Haha!  I have free will! 

But then... the discombobulation.  The unnamed worries.  The lack of focus.  The vague sense of discontent.  I meditate.  I do Qigong.  I bury myself in nature.  Still those feelings remain.  They persist.  They wear me down.  Then I remember - oh, right!  Somehow, just thinking of it doesn't work.  Even praying or reading some Scripture or talking with a like-minded friend doesn't help.  I have to go to CHURCH.

Oh, the humanity.  What did I do to deserve this?  Really?  Come on people.

So I go, and I usually cry or something.  I spend about half the service psychoanalyzing myself and resigning that I must suffer from some terrific mental defect.  The rest of the time I'm trying to get out of my own way.  Somewhere in between all of that, I see God.  It's a good thing.  I feel better.  I resolve not to forget anymore, even if it ties my brain in knots.  Every time the distance between resolving not to forget and actually not forgetting gets a little shorter. 

Being human is nothing if not chasing your own tail.

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