Christianity Unraveled

March 4th, 2020

Trust me, please, when I say that I want to believe. Because it's true. I want to believe that a God exists who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent. I want to believe that a heaven exists, that a force of true agape love is real, that a heavenly being desires a relationship with us. I want to believe in the supernatural, to believe that prayer works and that by simply asking, the all-powerful being looks down and intervenes. And perhaps there is a part of me that still believes. But if it is still there, it has been silenced and squished and suppressed, finally taking its turn after nineteen years of itself being the oppressor.

I don't have reasons why I can't believe, but I don't have reasons to be able to believe either. It feels like this limbo of not knowing why I do or do not believe something, and I can't even place my finger on this spinning globe of an answer to stop this dizziness. It's as if I've finally fallen down from turning and switching and jumping, and it's like I am still disoriented from the fall. The world is this distorted and changing view, my head hurts, and all I know is that if I stand up I will only fall back down.

"Always be prepared to give an account for what you believe."

That phrase has haunted me for most of my life. It brought me to seek apologetics, to learn all of the tricks and metaphors, to give reasons for morality, for inerrency of scripture, for creation. It brought many people down that route as well. It all seems foolish, now. A "chasing after the wind," perhaps.

Ecclesiastes is the only book I can bring myself to read when I muster up enough strength and resolve to even open the Bible. I turned there a bit ago (the first time in over a month and a half) to try to calm my soul in the only way I used to know how. Ecclesiastes is real, vulnerable, practical. I think it is one of the only books of the Bible that can bring me hope anymore. "Much study is a weariness to the flesh" – Eccl. 12:12. Isn't that the truth.

I like Ecclesiastes the most, probably, because it feels like the only piece of reality in the Bible. It tells me that I don't need an answer for everything that I believe, because no man – not even the wisest one – can understand the way things are. Even so, I feel like I need that answer still. Perhaps it's the Christian inside me, trying to tell me that my lukewarmness is unfounded and that I should have reasons backing up everything. Maybe it's my fear of being stuck in a situation of trying to explain why I am at where I am at and inadequately expressing it. I think I understand more of why people feel uncomfortable having conversations with Christian evangelists. It's not because being confronted with thoughts of the afterlife is threatening; it's because it seems as if none of them know what it means to listen and not argue each point you make about where you are at concerning faith.

It feels like I need a reason behind all of this. Most Christians that I've opened up to don't understand why I'm at the place where I am at in my faith. It's okay. I don't either. Most of my friends can't understand how after solidly knowing all of the Christian apologetics I can reject them. I try to explain that I can appreciate the work the apologists are doing, but that I find other evidence more convincing. I wish science and history were valid apologetics to more Christians. I wish it were more convincing to me as well.

"Always be prepared to give an account for what you believe."

I can't escape this feeling of needing to explain how and why I came to the conclusions I am coming to. While the conclusions of my belief fluctuate in and out, they are more than they ever used to. I could before hide behind the excuse of not having a solid belief (thus, I did not need to give an account), but I can no longer. To me, it feels harder being a Christian and a non-Christian wrapped in one than as a person who may have always been atheistic/agnostic. It feels like my apologetic to the Christian community must be two-fold: one, for why I am rejecting (or sort-of rejecting? It's hard to tell) Christianity after knowing it solidly all my life, for experiencing it, and for having a relationship with God, and two, for why I am accepting other forms of spirituality/atheism. It's hard to explain something you hardly know yourself.

Even so, perhaps I will stop trying to give an account for what I believe. I may seem foolish to some, and I may even begin to feel foolish myself. But for now, I can only say that I would rather be where I am at right now than continue to have been in the closed bubble I used to be in. Perhaps that is an account enough.