As I sit in the closet, I am straining for something.
I can’t really focus on any good train of thought.
I am just kind of daydreaming.
I still have to write a letter to myself which is due tonight, but I can’t even figure out where to begin.
So, because every sound that is made within 50 feet of this closet echoes off the concrete walls in this closet (there is just a 7 foot sheet rock wall dividing us, with no ceiling except the one 15 feet overhead) I over hear Jeff Goins and some others discussing their work on the ezine.
They are working on an article about the culture here in Palenque.
The discussion was about the Zapatistas, the Catholic church, and CONVERSION to CHRISTIANITY.
The discussion was on the use of the term ‘conversion’.
Yeah, another word that chafes me too.
When I was at Liberty University, it was mandatory for us to take a 3 credit course on evangelism (credits which I lost when I ‘transferred’, and by transferred, I mean I was asked not to return.
Another christian institution which I couldn’t fit into.
I lost the credits when I transferred to U- Mass).
This evangelism class was basically the same as any sales training I have received in my life.
A ‘how-to’ on selling christianity.
Or converts.
Really zealous Christians are supposed to make converts.
Why don’t I like the term ‘conversion’?
I am not sure, it just sounds really religious.
Really judgemental.
Really fake.
What, we convert someone from one set of beliefs to another?
One religion to another?
Is one religion better than another?
So many christians can’t even agree on what set of rules is best, and so many of us can’t even live the set of rules we have been given.
We are supposed to go and try to get other people to believe something we barely hold on to?
All religions do it.
Look at the Church of Atheism.
Going to court to try to convert other people’s children to their own misguided belief that what they believe is truth.
That somehow they have the grip on truth.
While atheists preach their belief, why are they just as happy as any one else?
Or not.
I wonder how many atheists struggle with their faith as much as I struggle with mine?
I wonder if their is that little nagging doubt in the back of their minds, this thing that won’t let them sleep, this belief in “Nogod”.
What about the belief in “Imgod”.
That is a great one.
That must cause some tossing and turning, what are you letting slip, “youregod”.
Wearing this anxiety like a badge of honor.
An anxiety that they have put all their chips on the wrong square.
At least a misguided hope in a creator, the uncaused cause, a living God gives some HOPE for eternity.
So, when the Sage asked us, on Friday night, what we lived for, I had so many questions spin through my head.
What am I living for?
Really.
I tried to think of what I really was living for.
Then he asked again, “WHY ARE YOU ALIVE?”.
Uhhh…so now I had two questions, and two tracks I was trying to answer.
One side of my head was trying to figure out why I was really alive.
The other side was trying to figure out what answer was he looking for?
At this point, I would have given whichever came first.
“JESUS!”
I heard.
“To serve God!” was another.
“To love others!”
All good answers, and ones I often doubt I actually believe.
Is that really what makes me tick?
I am trying, I believe it all, but sometimes I just can’t find that in me.
True joy for others?
Truly excited about all this God stuff?
Does my heart really break as I walk by the crazy old lady, or the guy that ‘walks’ on his weird looking legs.
(when did they stop using thalidamide down here?)
Do I love that person, or is that feeling just montezuma?
I get a weird queasy feeling when I walk by a beggar.
Like I want to help, but don’t want to bother.
Throw a few pesos at the problem?
Try to remember some technique from Liberty?
Maybe some kind of bait and switch? ROMANS ROAD!
Thats a good one.
Very effective I’m sure.
“TO BE LOVED!”
“Huh?”
That is what we were created for.
“TO BE LOVED!”
That is the reason I am alive?
To be loved?
The all powerful, all knowing, all present God, who knows every hair on my head, created me to be loved?
I thought he counted every hair on my head as a threat!
Like some evil santa that knows everything and has some coal he is looking to unload.
To be loved.
What would life be like if we lived a life that included a God who loves us?
An ALL POWERFUL
and PERSONAL God who LOVES us.
Does it sound like I am trying to make it sink in?
To me?
After 31 years.
Years of trying to figure all this out.
Years of knowing God better with hippies, (thanks Donald Miller “Blue Like Jazz”
which is a book everyone needs to read, no matter where you are in your belief system.)
of finding God almost every where except in church or any religious thing.
Of better conversations about God in a bar than in a church.
“TO BE LOVED”.
I am here to be loved.
And to somehow believe it enough, to BE LOVED and BE LOVE to the world.
That is Jesus’ whole point, whether we like it or not.
He loves us.
That is why I am here.
