Exactly
There's so much on my mind lately that it's a surprise I haven't been blogging like mad but, if you're subscribed to my 3 public broadcasts then you should know, I haven't been. Sometimes I think of my mind as a coiling spring... it accumulates tension over time. I think about things a lot, things bother me a lot, and usually I mentally catalog them to ponder further later and only very occasionally get back to them. This is why I don't write on [Opinionated Spiritual Commentary] as much as I probably should considering I think about Religion and Spirituality quite a bit.
I think one of my problems is that I don't TALK about it lately. Sure, I talk to Micah (we have quite a few conversations) but for whatever reason I don't feel like I get my opinion out unabated or ungoverned like I would in an [OSC] post. A friend recently told me that he "admired my openness and lack-of-giving-a-shit about what other people thought about my non-conforming position in our Christian-ish community in Colorado." While this is a shining validation to my sometimes suffering conscience when it comes to openness/lack-of-giving-a-shit, I really don't feel like I've been doing much expressing this way for quite some time.
This is strange, considering we're currently in a Small Group with a bunch of trusted friends. Are my ideas just not "radical" anymore, or (more likely) do I just feel discouraged about the entire situation? Every time we go to church, whether its Pathways or CCCC or somewhere else, I feel more like I'm wrong for disagreeing with the general flow and it frustrates me. Sometimes it even makes me angry for having the thoughts I do because I'm impotent to do anything but have a verbal tantrum here in my obscure forum.
Take, for example, the thought I had today. You may know I'm a little bugged by Christianity placing so much focus on Jesus and not enough focus on "God" and using the "Trinity" as an excuse to do so. Well, today I "realized" that it was probably because Jesus is a name where God is just a word. Technically, we should say THE God like we say The Holy Spirit, but somehow the "idea" of God gets transmuted into an erstwhile name like Allah (which also just means "God" and doesn't actually represent the "name" of the God in Islam). Christians latch onto Jesus because he's a HE, he did things that directly affected people rather than working through them, and because he has an actual label we can refer to him as.
But, since my mind is so jumbled and because it's unlikely anyone in a position of real moving power will read this, my "observation" is likely to go completely unnoticed much like probable millions of other amateur theologians throughout the ages have. Because I'm not James Dobson, I get ignored. Because I'm not a Saint, my opinions don't hold weight. Because I'm not saying the "right things," my opinions are invalid.
See how dangerous this road is for the mind to traverse?
How do you hold the encouragement in your heart that other people have confidence in you but still fight against an established system designed for you to conform to? How do you keep your principles when you only have the vague sense that they are what you need to hold to?
How do you not give up in the face of being completely misunderstood, dismissed and ignored while still having to face Church and God on a weekly basis only to find that things are just where you left them intellectually: not progressing toward any kind of conclusion?
I think one of my problems is that I don't TALK about it lately. Sure, I talk to Micah (we have quite a few conversations) but for whatever reason I don't feel like I get my opinion out unabated or ungoverned like I would in an [OSC] post. A friend recently told me that he "admired my openness and lack-of-giving-a-shit about what other people thought about my non-conforming position in our Christian-ish community in Colorado." While this is a shining validation to my sometimes suffering conscience when it comes to openness/lack-of-giving-a-shit, I really don't feel like I've been doing much expressing this way for quite some time.
This is strange, considering we're currently in a Small Group with a bunch of trusted friends. Are my ideas just not "radical" anymore, or (more likely) do I just feel discouraged about the entire situation? Every time we go to church, whether its Pathways or CCCC or somewhere else, I feel more like I'm wrong for disagreeing with the general flow and it frustrates me. Sometimes it even makes me angry for having the thoughts I do because I'm impotent to do anything but have a verbal tantrum here in my obscure forum.
Take, for example, the thought I had today. You may know I'm a little bugged by Christianity placing so much focus on Jesus and not enough focus on "God" and using the "Trinity" as an excuse to do so. Well, today I "realized" that it was probably because Jesus is a name where God is just a word. Technically, we should say THE God like we say The Holy Spirit, but somehow the "idea" of God gets transmuted into an erstwhile name like Allah (which also just means "God" and doesn't actually represent the "name" of the God in Islam). Christians latch onto Jesus because he's a HE, he did things that directly affected people rather than working through them, and because he has an actual label we can refer to him as.
But, since my mind is so jumbled and because it's unlikely anyone in a position of real moving power will read this, my "observation" is likely to go completely unnoticed much like probable millions of other amateur theologians throughout the ages have. Because I'm not James Dobson, I get ignored. Because I'm not a Saint, my opinions don't hold weight. Because I'm not saying the "right things," my opinions are invalid.
See how dangerous this road is for the mind to traverse?
How do you hold the encouragement in your heart that other people have confidence in you but still fight against an established system designed for you to conform to? How do you keep your principles when you only have the vague sense that they are what you need to hold to?
How do you not give up in the face of being completely misunderstood, dismissed and ignored while still having to face Church and God on a weekly basis only to find that things are just where you left them intellectually: not progressing toward any kind of conclusion?
Labels: church, conjecture, distraction, god, small groups
posted by Todd Newton at 14:21
1 Comments:
sounds like something Tony would tell you or say....
i think that's the catch-22 of christianity and religion at large...we're always left wondering. there are a million and twelve things that i wonder about on a pretty consistent basis and are pretty much in direct contrast to what i've been taught or how i was raised....
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