This is a journey I have been afraid to begin. I have feared unpacking and examining what I believe too closely--like if I looked at anyone one thing too long it would disappear, and the next and the next until I am left with nothing, without faith. But someone asked me what, if anything, I am certain of. I am certain of God. He is. He is good.
There may be other things that I come back to and in retrospect decide that I was certain of all along. But for now, this is my bedrock. I am opening everything else up for examination: Christ, the Church, the Bible, it's doctrines, salvation, eternity, man. On many of these I think I know what I believe. But thinking I know is not good enough for me anymore. I want to be sure of, at the very least, what I can be sure of.
This is a scavenger hunt for truth. It is spiritual as much as it is scholarly. I am thirsty for truth and for even knowing what truth is. I am open to suggested reading, to the thoughts of the community of those who believe, whatever they believe. I am willing to sort through the different perspectives to gain understanding and to sure up my own.
I need a starting point. Today I thought of starting with my Bible and I cried. I realized as much as I want (and I do desperately want) to believe that it is truth, I am skeptical. It is so difficult for me to read it right now and not notice from time to time that I am reading through a lens. How do you pack away your presuppositions and just see truth? How do you pack away the presuppositions of others that have been hammered over your head for decades and see truth?
Oh, I am sure of one more thing: I am HIS. He is with me in this journey. He will lead me to truth.
About Me
- Lex
- I love talking to people who challenge me and make me think...shake things up a bit! The closer to polar opposites, the more intriguing. Comfortable is boring. I'm all about stretching and growing. I feel like I've been stagnant for a very long time and I've just begun what is shaping up to be the journey of a lifetime. It's a journey of self-discovery that should help me write something more concrete and certain in the section "About Me". I am separated and hope to be divorced soon. This will close a chapter of tremendous pain in my life that started long before the marriage, before I even met him, in fact. I've been healing from a lot of things. That process has me rethinking everything: my faith, relationships, love, sex, hope, family, politics, dreams, the future. It's an exciting place to be and though often I'm silly and mindless on these pages, I welcome the opportunity to engage with others who'd like to discuss these things as well.
2 comments:
You are going on a serious journey. Don't know if I have anything to offer. I by know means consider myself an authority on God's word. I DO, like you know that He IS, and that I and His. I do know and can sense that a lot of my confusion and the way I handle lifes issues and trials has a lot to do with the fact that I haven't put in the needed time in learning about Who my faith is in. All that is to say that I need to spend some real time studying and learning what the bible sais....and they move from there.
says
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