The reason I have few minutes is because I don't presently have my laptop. It broke. So I am borrowing the office computer between job tasks and looking busy all the same. We don't have much work this week at the community. As January slows life outside, we slow inside. This is good news as I was not eager to charge fully ahead into the phone-calling, email-typing, log-dragging work week that will become the norm very soon. I am coming off a few weeks spent in Providence where I had a healthy balance of lonely freedom and warm companionship. With the oddity of life out in the woods creeping unnervingly close to normality in my head it was a good relief to encounter the chaos of the small city. Four days
In the free time of this week I have taken to reading all that I meant to read while on vacation. But today I read a book that was not on my list but one I was told I must read!. The Shack, a book intended on being sold to the the overzealous Christians of the Midwest (instead of apparently those who need to be saved) is a piece of literature for- I was convinced - the weak-minded, hope-filled person searching for faith in a redemptive, huggable God. Instead, I was right. Please, dear reader, do not believe I have been reading only for which to rant. I would much rather read something I enjoyed. Instead I opened the book as I opened to Christianity several years back: with confidence and faith respectively. I have the same mental thought as of a physicist I heard on NPR last week. That is, through science and reason I must believe in the greater likelihood of something other than God and heaven and justice, but that does not stop me from wanting there to be something good and nourishing after I die. My fall from family and promise of hope in Catholicism were both taken with the drug I was offered. Faith, it would seem, would get me through it all and answer the possible questions. That it did and I was unsatisfied with the juvenile responses I received from people I trusted most. I think this is what adults often call 'tough love'. But this kind of love is one-sided with no true ill intent.
The book, as I described to Ellen this afternoon, has more worth and truth on the outside than the combined pages within. The first two quotes on the back cover are from recording artists, obviously the best critique comes from celebrities, from which the first reads, "THE SHACK is the most absorbing work of fiction I've read in many years. My wife and I laughed, cried, and repented of our own lack of faith along the way. THE SHACK will leave you craving for the presence of God." Below that in the description of the story tells us, "In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack [main character] gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him." The truth within these statements is not a kind one but a dauntingly factual one. The human community knows itself better now than ever before. We know and can see vast evidence for our emotional psyches transforming fundamental truth. But when it comes to the unproven we want to believe, so much so that we are willing to give in to the piece of our mind that sways us off course almost every time. Some scoff at those who believe in alien encounters and unknown monsters while being lured themselves into believing fully in any author who has little ability to write a story but tells us what we want to hear, the unbelievable, that if it's too good to be true, then it's true. The words within this overpriced novel offer as much hope as a loan shark, offering you riches and then beating you senselessly to death in the end.
This is not a critique on the belief of a god but a statement for how one believes. Surely what we know as fact today will change many times over. Not long ago we had nine planets, now we have eight. Science does what religion will never be able to do, question itself, admit its own errors and move forward with truth. We have an inherent function within our brains that makes a truth out of a lie if it is believed and repeated enough. I can speak for this personally as I have bought into the continued lie enough times to recognize the enemy at the gate. At many points in my upbringing I was taken to falling at the feet of God in tears begging God to step out from silence and for once give an answer whether it satisfied me or not. Only did answers come when I questioned the source. When I finally opened the door to the rational world I received a flood of answers and understanding like a lifetimes worth of mail waiting in piles for me to come home from vacation. And so my point is to say, question question question everything you know, especially that which and whom you trust. If you want something to be true for truths sake it will be much more difficult to see past your own illusions. Those who read this novel and come out of it saying they have renewed faith in god are not doing so because the author gave reasonable examples and reasonings to trust that there exists a supernatural being. No, instead they went into it wanting to believe and through the conduit of fantastical illusions came out of it satisfied. Truth is most often not that satisfying and will leave you wishing you didn't find out. Deeply religious people often get what they want in terms of faith. Like a child who wants and is given everything in the toy store, many religious members are spoiled by what they want.
But the part that hurts me the most (and it truly does) is that this is done completely unknowingly. The bratty child in the store is often looked at with contempt and hatred. But that child is not at fault - it is merely following the pattern set by its parents and peers. I do not hate nor do I feel contempt toward religious people. I am hurt because I have found a feast and am unable to inform the hungry. I shout and I plead but am rarely heard. On the contrary I am given backlash, sometimes from those I love most. (I even had a taxi driver let me off conveniently seven blocks from my destination for saying that despite what my shirt said I did not believe Jesus to be "an army of one") My mission as a youth was to convert people to my understanding (dare I say my parent's understanding) of Jesus. But I do not have a mission now nor do I belong to any kind of group. But I will not look you in the face and lie any longer. When I lied and said I believed and said I loved and said I was satisfied I was given comfort and a smile from my fellow students. But now that I tell the truth and clean out my closet and live honestly and purely I am condemned and rejected by them. I was invited by some of these friends on facebook to join in a religious gathering of scripture reading today. I defriended them. I do not picture them as my enemy but I do not wish to be bombarded by the flat-earthers of the modern age. There is only so much I can take and just because I call it ignorance does not mean I say it snidely. I do not jest at them with derision as many like me do. But I cannot help my own frustration of losing so many years. After the rain falls we can either be cleansed or muddied. Maybe I have a foot in both.
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