Thursday, May 17, 2012

The God of Confusion, Frustration, Incomprehension

This post was inspired as a response to this post on another blog that I frequent.  Originally I started to respond via comment to the post itself but realized it would all be much too long a comment and so I write a post on my own blog.

Here is what I think:

I believe quite strongly that God exists.  Beyond that I do not know what He is.

I do not believe that He is at all what we are lead to believe as we grow and go to church.  I think there is evidence of that statement everywhere.  God does not protect us from danger, He does not make our decisions for us, He does not stop us from doing anything we choose to do.  He does not throw us pennies from heaven or get us that really great job with the million dollar paycheck.  I don't think He cares whether or not we go to church or sing in the choir.  I do not think, regardless of how often and desperately we as parents prostrate ourselves before Him and beg Him to save our child from drug abuse, alcohol abuse, gambling addiction, a life of crime, major illness, car accident, etc. that he actually will.  But maybe sometimes He does.  The fact is I have no idea.

But He is something that we have never known or realized before.  And He exists within us in a way we have never known or realized before.  We cannot pinpoint Him, we cannot discern His thoughts from our own.  And I don't believe we can 'see' Him until He's actually gone by us... assuming you want to call that "seeing".

I believe that people who are on a spiritual journey (aren't we all?) and by that I mean people who are actively, consciously seeking to know more, seeking to understand, seeking what is "supposed" to be for them, I believe that these people will come to know something more about God.  What that something more is I cannot say and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to qualify it.

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs quite slowly and the best word I can come up with to describe it is "unknowing".  I believe that in order to truly "know" God we have to unlearn all of our previous concepts, concrete, man-made ideas about what God is.  Because none of them are true.  What is true is that we cannot grasp God with our own concrete ideas about what God is and how He operates.  I believe that God actively produces this phenomenon that one might call darkness, unknowing, confusion, loss of faith.  We become confused because if we choose to be absolutely truthful with ourselves it is quite obvious that our old, well-worn ideas about God simply are not true.

And then what?

Where do I go from here?

What do I do now?

Well I'd have to say that I have no choice but to wait.  I have no choice but to live my life with this confusion and ambivalence and darkness and unknowing.  And see what happens.

What other option do I have?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for hearing and coming along side me on this journey. I suppose my only option is to wait, but I am doing so rather impatiently these days. There is a sense of urgency I can't shake. I must remind myself daily that this too shall pass.

    (Elinore or Eleanor?)

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  2. I am quite familiar with that sense of urgency. I've come to accept that it will probably always be with me from here on out. In a sense I have come to know it as the call or rather the voice that keeps leading me forward... To what I do not know.
    It'll pass and then it will come back again and again.

    Best,
    Eleanor

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