A Confession... of sorts
I’ll go ahead and forewarn those of you who are only watching me for me art, or who are not religious, or not Christian, that those subjects are what this entry are all about. Namely, my religion, Christianity, and the fact that I’m bored to death.
Don’t get me wrong, and those of you who are die-hard atheists or whatever, don’t get up and dance just yet. I’m not losing my faith, I’m just, I think, bored to death with my church and my dad’s preaching. It’s like the Acquire the Fire conferences I went to with church groups as a kid, and the church camps I attended. To me, the cool aspects of those things were making new (if usually short-lived) friendships, being out in nature at camp, and the chance to be away from home -- not the things I learned or the life-changing decisions I made. The only topics those events ever seemed to address were ‘having self-esteem because you’re special to God’, ‘resisting peer pressure through Christ, and ‘sexual abstinence until Godly marriage’. I was a shy kid with few friends, but I liked myself, and few friends means little peer pressure. And I wasn’t even interested in boys until college. Soooo I got really tired of that stuff really fast. I say all that to say my dad’s sermons feel the same way to me now as those conferences and camps did then.
And as far as life-changing decisions go, I’m a pastor’s kid - I’ve kindof grown up with all the basics of Christianity pre-installed from such an early age that I don‘t remember the first time I heard anything. But at the same time I knew that just being a pastor’s kid didn’t make me an automatic ‘Christian by association.’ I made my decision to become a Christian and be baptized sitting in the back seat of a car, late at night, long ago, all on my own, not in response to a sermon or altar-call. When I was baptized, it was an embarrassing affair for me, albeit mixed up with joy at the same time. But when I think of when I ‘became a Christian’, I think of that night, not of my baptism.
Like I said, I’m not losing my faith. When I think of God and Jesus and the account of the Incarnation, and the crucifixion and Resurrection, and about my personal belief that those things are what save me, I don’t feel any doubt. And even as I type them, I feel a tiny bit of the shivery thrill of the impossibility-but-truth of them, and NO, I’m not losing my faith for a second. But I AM bored. It’s something that I suppose most Christians must deal with at some point, and I suspect it must happen sooner for pastors’ kids. Because I’ve grown up with nothing else - I mean, just to give an example of the utter shelteredness of my childhood, I never even heard any music but Christian music until sometime around high school. My dad is a pastor, and it’s not his job, it’s his life, and to a very great extent it’s the whole family’s life, too. Especially when you’re home schooled, as I was, until tenth grade. And it’s really, really, REALLY hard for me to hear something I haven’t heard before, to learn something I don’t already know. No, I don’t have the Bible memorized, and I know I don’t know it all, but it feels like I do. I go to church on Sundays, and in the afternoon I can barely remember what my dad preached about, because it all runs together for me. I only remember what he preached about today because I was paying attention to it with this journal entry in mind. He was preaching from Ephesians, talking about the unity of Jews and Gentiles through Christ, and from there the unity of the church, and at one point he actually got choked up about it. And not one word of it was new to me. I haven’t heard my dad preach about anything that can’t be grasped by a very newly converted Christian in as long as I can remember.
I know there’s more out there. I need more. And I don’t mean more ‘feeling’ or more emotional involvement, or more ‘moving’ worship, because on some level I think all that’s a load of crap. I like worship, but I like it because I like to sing, and for the most part I don’t pay much attention to the lyrics anymore. I believe because I believe intellectually (as unintellectual as that will no doubt sound to some of you), and that’s backed up by a bit of gut feeling, not the other way around. The things that make me interested in and excited about my faith are things like reading C.S. Lewis, things like the deep mysteries of the Bible, like, say, the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis. The (yes I’ll say it) mystical things about Christianity. Nobody touches that stuff. Nobody’s brave enough to. I think if Lewis attended just my church, he probably wouldn’t have been converted. I feel like I’m being fed nothing but mashed peas and bananas when I want steak. Or maybe a better comparison is an acquired taste, like sushi. Things you don’t feed to toddlers because they can’t digest or appreciate them. Or if my church were a martial art school, I would have given up and gone home long ago because I had already beaten every other student there and couldn’t find any opponents who could actually challenge me.
So, I guess this is all a long way of saying that I think I need to find a new church. And that scares me for several reasons. It means hurting my parents’ feelings with the implication that they aren’t good enough for me anymore, because they lead a church that‘s not good enough for me anymore. It means leaving behind a church that I do love for its warmth and welcome if not for its intellect. And, most scarily, it means trying to find a place that’s not the same, which I think may be more difficult that even I fear.
...ehh, I guess that's all. If you made it this far you really are amazing, and if you made it this far, then I'm really interested to hear what you think. So, comments, anyone?
Don’t get me wrong, and those of you who are die-hard atheists or whatever, don’t get up and dance just yet. I’m not losing my faith, I’m just, I think, bored to death with my church and my dad’s preaching. It’s like the Acquire the Fire conferences I went to with church groups as a kid, and the church camps I attended. To me, the cool aspects of those things were making new (if usually short-lived) friendships, being out in nature at camp, and the chance to be away from home -- not the things I learned or the life-changing decisions I made. The only topics those events ever seemed to address were ‘having self-esteem because you’re special to God’, ‘resisting peer pressure through Christ, and ‘sexual abstinence until Godly marriage’. I was a shy kid with few friends, but I liked myself, and few friends means little peer pressure. And I wasn’t even interested in boys until college. Soooo I got really tired of that stuff really fast. I say all that to say my dad’s sermons feel the same way to me now as those conferences and camps did then.
And as far as life-changing decisions go, I’m a pastor’s kid - I’ve kindof grown up with all the basics of Christianity pre-installed from such an early age that I don‘t remember the first time I heard anything. But at the same time I knew that just being a pastor’s kid didn’t make me an automatic ‘Christian by association.’ I made my decision to become a Christian and be baptized sitting in the back seat of a car, late at night, long ago, all on my own, not in response to a sermon or altar-call. When I was baptized, it was an embarrassing affair for me, albeit mixed up with joy at the same time. But when I think of when I ‘became a Christian’, I think of that night, not of my baptism.
Like I said, I’m not losing my faith. When I think of God and Jesus and the account of the Incarnation, and the crucifixion and Resurrection, and about my personal belief that those things are what save me, I don’t feel any doubt. And even as I type them, I feel a tiny bit of the shivery thrill of the impossibility-but-truth of them, and NO, I’m not losing my faith for a second. But I AM bored. It’s something that I suppose most Christians must deal with at some point, and I suspect it must happen sooner for pastors’ kids. Because I’ve grown up with nothing else - I mean, just to give an example of the utter shelteredness of my childhood, I never even heard any music but Christian music until sometime around high school. My dad is a pastor, and it’s not his job, it’s his life, and to a very great extent it’s the whole family’s life, too. Especially when you’re home schooled, as I was, until tenth grade. And it’s really, really, REALLY hard for me to hear something I haven’t heard before, to learn something I don’t already know. No, I don’t have the Bible memorized, and I know I don’t know it all, but it feels like I do. I go to church on Sundays, and in the afternoon I can barely remember what my dad preached about, because it all runs together for me. I only remember what he preached about today because I was paying attention to it with this journal entry in mind. He was preaching from Ephesians, talking about the unity of Jews and Gentiles through Christ, and from there the unity of the church, and at one point he actually got choked up about it. And not one word of it was new to me. I haven’t heard my dad preach about anything that can’t be grasped by a very newly converted Christian in as long as I can remember.
I know there’s more out there. I need more. And I don’t mean more ‘feeling’ or more emotional involvement, or more ‘moving’ worship, because on some level I think all that’s a load of crap. I like worship, but I like it because I like to sing, and for the most part I don’t pay much attention to the lyrics anymore. I believe because I believe intellectually (as unintellectual as that will no doubt sound to some of you), and that’s backed up by a bit of gut feeling, not the other way around. The things that make me interested in and excited about my faith are things like reading C.S. Lewis, things like the deep mysteries of the Bible, like, say, the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis. The (yes I’ll say it) mystical things about Christianity. Nobody touches that stuff. Nobody’s brave enough to. I think if Lewis attended just my church, he probably wouldn’t have been converted. I feel like I’m being fed nothing but mashed peas and bananas when I want steak. Or maybe a better comparison is an acquired taste, like sushi. Things you don’t feed to toddlers because they can’t digest or appreciate them. Or if my church were a martial art school, I would have given up and gone home long ago because I had already beaten every other student there and couldn’t find any opponents who could actually challenge me.
So, I guess this is all a long way of saying that I think I need to find a new church. And that scares me for several reasons. It means hurting my parents’ feelings with the implication that they aren’t good enough for me anymore, because they lead a church that‘s not good enough for me anymore. It means leaving behind a church that I do love for its warmth and welcome if not for its intellect. And, most scarily, it means trying to find a place that’s not the same, which I think may be more difficult that even I fear.
...ehh, I guess that's all. If you made it this far you really are amazing, and if you made it this far, then I'm really interested to hear what you think. So, comments, anyone?