An Honest Reflection - Faith and Doubt

This blog is comprised of some bits that are drawn directly from a journal entry that I wrote at the beginning of the month, some of it is adapted to further explain myself. Most of it will be word-for-word. This is simply an honest reflection of faith in doubt, doubt in faith, and navigating the two when the struggle is all you see and feel.
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Finally. Finally I can cry. I've tried. I tried watching movies to elicit a good cry, but I still just couldn't muster it up. I think I've been running from feeling anything since I've moved here. Even faith. I haven't felt "close" to God consistently (or even really intermittently) since before graduation.

What's opening me up right now, finally bringing some release, is watching Calvary Chapel's Praise Jam. It reminded me of my faith then and I missed it. The physical space of that church. The people. Mostly the feeling of worshiping in that space.

Man, the pendulum swings. I have had so many different experiences of faith and conceptions of who God is over the years. Youth group, Calvary Chapel, Mission Year, Holy Trinity, South Lawndale, Prayer team, IHOP (Int. House of Prayer), Missio Dei, Reba Place Fellowship, Redeemer Anglican, North Park... Each with their own unique presentation of God and how we live out the faith individually and communally. I hadn't anticipated that with all of that, this is where I'd end up - crippled by fear, confusion, and guilt. I don't know how to reconcile all I have seen and experienced in these places, or if they even can reconcile. I feel like a reed in the wind, blown each way.

Maybe the fact that I have held onto faith through all these experiences is a sign of its strength and tenacity amidst it all, but really... What has remained of my faith from each transition to the next? Has anything been held solid and maintained? I feel like I'm grasping at fine sand. Finally it all falls through and I'm standing here with a clenched fist, and what remains can't build a dwelling - it can't even build a sandcastle. It's all I can do to keep the few grains of sand in the crevices of my clenched fist. All the remaining grains serve to do is to remind me of what I once had.

I'm so afraid. I'm afraid to believe anything about God anymore because my faith has been scarred and become more fragile for believing too much too easily, because at each stage I threw aside all my faith had been built on to discover news ground on which to build. I'm afraid to open my hands in hopes of more for fear that the few grains I have left will slip away.

I'm afraid to even speak of God as though he's more than a principle or concept, not because I don't believe he's more but because I'm afraid to put a stake in who I believe he is if he's more. I'm not afraid of God. I'm afraid of disfiguring him, following something other than him that I think is him and having my soul slowly diminish as I give more and more of myself to something less than or different than God as he truly is. I don't think my faith could survive that again.

I get anxious talking about God. I'm terrified to speak anything and attribute it to God or to his work. I'm not afraid of what God will say or do when I open my hands. I'm still afraid of little old me blindly ravaging my own soul and possibly hurting others in the process by feeding them ideas about God that are false and are more reflective of our broken vision than of his actual character. Any broken ideas I hold onto about God don't actually change God's character, but my perception of his character, making him less and less familiar to me, as though I don't know him and never have.

Like an old memory retrieved after years of non-use is tainted by every experience thereafter and is altered as details are forgotten or misplaced, so I feel with God. Like all I have are memories of God that have been twisted, changed, and disfigured as a result of all the experiences and ideas I have gained over the years. Some are right, some are wrong. Some are beneficial and some are destructive. I no longer know how to sift which is which. Or how to separate ideas that were good but have become destructive over time by misapplication or misunderstanding.

I could ask God how to sift. I could pray for greater understanding. In the end I still only hear God through this vessel, through myself, my interpretations. And my interpretations can't be trusted because I'll always be interpreting through the lenses of my experiences.

When it comes down to it, I have two choices. I can stay in this place, perfectly preserved, my cramped hand holding to the few grains of sand I have left. Perfectly preserved in what I hold onto. Perfectly preserved in this fear, this yearning for more with the certainty of remaining "as is". Or I could risk it all, again. I could risk unimaginable damage to my faith that could reduce me to less than I imagined possible, with the possibility that perhaps I might experience restoration, whatever that holds. I want to take that risk.

God, this is what I've got. If any of it is useable, will you use it to build something new? Something whole that integrates who you've revealed yourself to be in truth?

If you could feed 5,000 with a few fish and loaves, if you could keep a widow's jar of sustenance from running empty, if you could provide manna in a barren land, couldn't you build a dwelling from these grains and the ones that I have foolishly let slip between my fingers?