Whenever I start thinking about faith, it takes my lotto brain syndrome and puts it on overdrive. Seriously spastic, so many thoughts at once. I read THIS article, about stupid church cliches, with my morning coffee and giggled but kept saying YES, exactly! Everyone of this author’s 5 noted annoyances, were spot on. “Loved on” is TOTALLY creepy, and nailing down things the Bible CLEARLY states is not my strong suit.
I mean it took me close to 30 years, and some days the voices in my head still wonder, which side of the coin I fall on… Heaven or Hell. Friends don’t freak out, we are much closer to 99% of the time being certain of that answer. Quoting the Bible, and understanding it clearly, are too TOTALLY different things.
I think we all agree Jesus, His life, His work, His birth, death… so on and so forth…. are ALL amazing, super natural, and its why we all keep at trying to figure this thing called our life out. However, I don’t think any of us would hold Jesus in as high of a regard if throughout the Bible, while teaching everyone, we read over and over again “Well MY Dad said this…..”. Not like He couldn’t have done that, it still would have been right, but hello arrogance…. prolly why He kept teaching humility.
I like the “It is written….” statements, they’re more my kind of flow. I tend to bristle at, “It is written in this book, on this page, in this verse”, I get that there is a time/place for it, some people honestly don’t know that what you just said was in the Bible. They think you’re some kind of wise sage or something, and pointing them back to the source is key, but how do you toe that line carefully?
As the author of the article noted, we respond better to the humble Pastor, “This is where study and prayer have led me, but I could be wrong”, and yet we also CRAVE leaders. We are constantly looking for people to lead us confidently, that will stand up and say, THIS way. Then we get mad at them when they do, because how dare they. It really is a no win situation.
One of the biggest tenants of the Christian faith is that when we accept Jesus as our savior He takes up residence within us. To me, this makes for a rather problematic situation, talk about too many cooks in the kitchen. Great, now we got Jesus in us, but mine says I should be going this way, and your’s says I should be going that way, and like 95%+ of our world population has serious trust issues anyway, soooooo……. Yeah.
Thankfully actions speak louder than words, and God told us not to assess by the words someone says, but by their actions….. Then He also said we’re all gonna screw up and fall short, which is why we needed Jesus in the first place. Riiiiiiight….. Then the whole grace and forgiveness thing get’s practiced, but lands us back in the trust issues. See. Spastic brain.
I really like the actions based Gospel though… we are supposed to be doing, not just talking. If I’m being honest, I liked it a little more before I became a mom. The idea of great adventures, doing huge things like fostering, adopting, building safe houses, providing basic needs to those living without. Healing. Freeing. Saving…. Staying totally honest, being a mom feels a little selfish to me at times. I know its a totally oxymoronic statement, cause mom’s by their very nature get to do very little for themselves while taking care of the needs of their family. However this is what I wanted. I wanted the family, so taking care of their needs is just part of it, and since it literally consumes ALL of my time, I feel selfish. Don’t worry, (or do) because the sheer number of voices in my head remind me I’m not being selfish, raising kids IS an adventure, and it is a HUGE thing. (I go back and forth between accepting the voices in my head, and worrying that I’m one voice away from a straight jacket). However, I still get panicky because God’s wired me in a way that I feel called to both be with and raise my kids AND still do those big things, so then I’m all on edge asking “when”…. now, should I be doing that now, with them, am I missing it??? He’ll calm me down for a bit, with reminders that my life is a journey not a race, and there will be time when kids are not this young and demanding (I’ve taken to calling this my sheep season), until I get spun up again next week and He has to convince me all over again 🙂
So thankful that writing can take the spaz out of my brain and get it out on ‘paper’ so I can return to being a normally functioning adult….. I just feel bad for any of you reading it, cause I’m never entirely convinced you can follow my train of thought 🙂