A crazy post title for a blog about God, don’t you think? Actually, I’ve come to all or most of my faith through the practice of logic. God’s made me this way and I can’t fight it.
The Question of Orthodoxy
I’ve been fighting the lure of orthodox Christianity. My trouble is always with Jesus as God’s son – aren’t we all His sons and daughters? OK, you say, Christianity says the rest of us are adopted and Mary had a “virgin” birth, because God impregnated. Oddly, I’ve never even questioned that area of faith – every single other piece of Scripture has been a struggle for me but not that.
Is Jesus God? I truly don’t know. I do know some things though – that he was a holy man, that he was filled with God, that he was born perfect, that you need to follow his example, that his sacrifice was not meaningless.
That last line has given me lots of trouble on the issue of NOT being orthodox. Honesty, what value is his sacrifice if he was not totally officially OF God?
Thinking of Christianity
This then is what happened over the last two days:
I’ve struggled with this issue because I find it hard to be a Christian and not believe what other Christians believe. I looked at non-orthodox churches and just felt something was “not quite right”. I did a seminar last weekend at my church on spiritual gifts, which was meant to enlist us for service in our church. My main gift was “knowledge” – not something I can really use in any church ministry if my faith is unorthodox.
More and more this has been coming to a head. I questioned my own monthly taking of communion, which I practiced since December, when I felt called to, and felt honestly in my heart as soon as the bread hit my stomach that I’d done something that made God happy.
The Advice of Others
This is something that I try to avoid – after all, aren’t all Christians going to be slanted towards, well, Christianity as the REAL TRUTH? I’ve been speaking with my godmother a lot lately, and somehow told her my struggle: I’m cool with God, I even get the Holy Spirit at last, but Jesus confounds me. She gave me Scriptures and the typically Christian credo: much of which I don’t believe. I don’t believe God would abandon anyone who was truly seeking Him to hell if the seeker could not wrap his mind or faith around Christianity. Period. God is either merciful or not, and that is NOT. I still believe certainly in successive lives as well.
Then I got a scripture on how we will only see some of the truth now, and more of it after death. Between that and reading on sanctification in John Wesley’s “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection”, I saw that what I was looking for was God to give me the answer on how the Path can be true and Christianity as well. God basically said it’s none of my business at this point.
Here’s where logic won out: God has put me a church which has brought me SO close to Him. He’s given me a strong desire for ministry in it. He’s blocked out any connection with the Path to Perfection, and open doors into Christianity. My brain told me that God is looking for me to become a Christian.
Period.
The Pieces All Fit Together
Today’s sermon was the final straw. The first thing I heard in church was about how we can’t know it all. The music was all about what and who Jesus is: God. The sermon was about how RELIGION – or whatever it is – can get in the way of your faith, and your faith comes from God. Specifically about how the veil was torn at Christ’s death, and how we let our own personal veils get in the way of our faith.
It really was like God was talking to ME. God’s shown me things that maybe other Christians haven’t seen. Don’t think this is a glory thing – this just makes it HARDER. I have to be more brave than the average Christian, and I’m a chicken sh** at heart. I won’t say I don’t have problems with Christ’s divinity, and I won’t say that this leap is not completely and totally TERRIFYING. I AM saying that if God wants me to accept Christianity, I can take a hint. Someday He’ll explain it all to me – boy that’ll be a lot of explaining!