Just Another Ramble

Twenty years ago, I called on God to be my Father and made the decision to take my Christianity seriously. I had little or no understanding of Christian doctrine then (I was fourteen). I just felt this irresistible pull towards God, and the Scriptures and whatever books and materials I could get a hold of. At the time, these were “The Book”, an edition of the Living Bible, and various books by Hal Lindsey.

I was a social outcast at the time. With an undiagnosed case of Asperger's Syndrome, of which no one at the time knew anything about, I barely understood my own feelings about anything, and really couldn't comprehend – and was unaware I couldn't comprehend – the experience of a basic relationship between two people. I was wrapped in my own world and withdrawn from the painful reality of the world of people around me, a world I didn't understand and had stopped trying to comprehend. Those decisions and choices weren't necessarily deliberate or conscious, but they were ones in which I was trapped nevertheless. This was the mental and emotional state I was in when I began to feel this pull.

One thing is for certain, I took it seriously. I always have. I took it seriously enough to read everything I could about it, and began to go to church voluntarily; embroiling myself in yet more relationships which I couldn't truly form with people I had known for several years by then, but hadn't seen for at least one or two; and embroiling myself in relationships with people that didn't like me, and with whom I knew didn't like me (and not without cause).

So I continued learning everything which I could from sermons, the youth group, other people at the church, and trying to become more involved, although still being deficient in knowing and understanding people. I thought I knew what Christianity was all about from the sermons, and the books, and the people, and the Bible itself.

I then had the privilege of going on a missions trip overseas to Papua New Guinea. This trip taught me lessons which I continue to look back on to this day. But it was the first time, as I returned from New Guinea, that my eyes were really opened to the fact that something wasn't quite right with the church. That learning all the “right” doctrines, and going to church on Sundays, and doing all the things with the church youth group, while good, was still missing something. At the time I just thought it wasa lack of devotion or willingness to put everything on the line like the missionaries with whom I had just spent two months did; an illusion which didn't really get dispelled later on when I went to a Bible School run by the same missions organization and spent two more years there. If nothing else they only tried to reinforce it, consciously or not.

It was during these earliest times in my own journey of faith when I was struck with the simple, inexplicable fact that the Christians, the churches, the books, and I myself were all missing something, something important in our faith and the way we lived our lives. I had no idea what when I started, and little idea when I made the first realization of this, but I spent the next fifteen years after that first Bible School trying to find it, believing that I had, then realizing that I hadn't found anything, then seeing glimmers of it every now and then, like pieces of a puzzle that someone has scattered around a house and then left for someone else to pick up.

I read book after book. Some were profoundly worthwhile, others were little more than fluff, while yet others had no right to call themselves Christian. For a time I even read works outside of the Christian tradition and gained some insights which drove me straight back to the Scriptures and Christ Himself. By the grace of God I was driven towards the ancient roots of the faith, and the rich body of writings and Tradition left by those who lived within a few generations of the Apostles, and knew their Teaching far better than we do today. I continued to be pulled irresistibly towards God and to find what was missing.

I searched ancient fathers and masters of the faith of Jesus Christ, and these led me to delve even further into place in prayer that not long before I had no idea even existed. I have attempted to seek the holy darkness and been frustrated and confused when I couldn't, when the day before even I had experienced a wonder in prayer to where I had no desire to leave. I fought, and continue to struggle within myself over the most benign of actions or ways to spend my time.

And twenty years later, humbly, I have come to a conclusion that what is called Christian today is often not, nor has any understanding of what the word means. I have come to the conclusion that I am often not Christian in my thoughts, my words, or my actions. I look back on those who came before us, many hundreds of years ago, I read their words, and what they knew and experienced, and I know that I am nothing in comparison, and what is far, far worse than this, is that we have carelessly twisted and abused the faith which they gave their lives, and their deaths, to pass down to us so that it is little more than a mockery and a caricature.

Christianity isn't a set of doctrines. It's a practice and a discipline and an agreement with God that you will cooperate with Him through renouncing yourself, your possessions, your wants, even your bodily appetites and the pursuit of experiencing the one relationship which truly matters more than anything else. It's regarding your favorite T.V. show, the things you're proud of accomplishing, and your prized book collection as little more than trash in the active pursuit of knowing and drawing close to Him. It's taking a hard, honest look at yourself and admitting to yourself that death is only a breath away, and that if you were to stand in judgment, it would be absolutely damning, and that it is only because God loves you, and in His mercy, that you have not been destroyed already and that He is capable and willing to deliver even you for the sake of Jesus Christ. Christianity is letting go of everything which we have done or been before, and reaching ahead towards Him and not looking back.

Christianity is a constant fight with your innermost desires and thoughts, and the constant whispers of unclean spirits in your ears seeking to either puff you up with pride, or drag you down in despair, and to do anything other than to walk the fine razor in between the two which is humility and an honest appraisal of yourself, and acceptance of the love of God. It's the fight to leave off eating until you spend time in prayer in the morning, or to spend time in contemplation of God instead of watching Sci-Fi reruns. It's the hard work of emptying yourself, emptying your mind in the hopes of brushing up against the holy darkness of His presence, and having to walk away without it because He doesn't want you to harm yourself spiritually by giving you more than you're capable of yet and being destroyed through pride. It's the never ending battle against yourself, your own laziness, your own lack of empathy, your own ignorance, weakness, blindness, and your own refusal to admit these things.

Christianity is the embrace of suffering, any and all suffering which destroys and breaks down the ego, for the sake of Jesus Christ. It's the deliberate choice to tell yourself “no” to even the most benign of distractions which come between you and your Lord. It is the Cross of Jesus Christ and the embrace of it into our lives until it burns its way down deep into us and we ourselves are destroyed and out of the way. It is destroying our own soul in order to deliver it. It is dying that He might live within and out through us. It is the hard work of building that relationship through Jesus Christ between you and God, and defending that relationship at all costs as more important than your possessions, your comforts, all other relationships, and especially your very life.

What's most often missing in the churches today is not some doctrine or study or “new” idea. What's missing most often in the churches today which the ancient fathers of the Church understood only too well, is Christianity itself.