Sunday, November 19, 2006

A confession

In my previous writing I was guilty of projecting my own feelings onto my generation. It was ill-disguised in unnecessary hyperbole and the odd mixed metaphor, and framed with the self-righteous question, but in its essentials it was my cry out into the wilderness. I don't know how to answer the questions it raises, but I do know fom observation that there are a lot of people who think like me.

I left the church for a few years because I didn't know how to face these issues. I still don't. The contradictions, the void within, the sense of purposelessness, the inability to say confidently to myself, "I Know". These things still haunt me, and sometimes, like last night, they flare up into outright depression. I was afraid, and so I hid my personal feelings in a general diatribe.

I do think that these are pressing issues for the church, because I don't think that I am alone (or rather I do feel like I'm alone, but at least I'm not the only one) in this pattern of thinking. I think that it is a product of our time. I left the church because I found it was easier to avoid these questions than to seek their answers. I came back at least in part because I found that even when unsuccessful, the search for answers was more rewarding.

I don't know why the world is the way it is. I don't know where God is, or how to know if he is. I don't know where God wants me, or what he wants me to do. And so I struggle forward, or backward as the case may be, and seek God.

I really feel like the church needs to figure out how to reach individuals who feel this way. The church tends to project a very confident aura, but I think sometimes people need to hear that its okay to not know. They need to hear that I feel the same way, not that I have all the answers they seek.

I don't know. This post doesn't make any sense to me so you should probably just ignore it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good up 'til the last line. You don't have to qualify your statements by pretending not to mean them. I think the seeking is more important than the finding, particularly in this realm of so many questions and so few answers. You articulate well the existential dilemma of our generation. Besides, logic was flimsy ground to stand on at best.

Anonymous said...

Thank you