An Open Letter to God and Whoever Else Is Listening

Recently, someone told me that it sounded like part of me had died.

I wonder, with fear and trembling, if they're right. A certain veil has been lifted from my eyes and reality won't leave me alone. So I'd like to tell you (that is, God and whoever else is listening) what kinds of reality I've been facing.

Believing in God is an awfully hard thing to do. You're raised with all these crazy ideas and you accept and confirm them with some degree of blindness and then one day you wonder if maybe your belief really boils down to a bunch of people who, like you, are afraid to die and thusly conjure an Imaginary Friend who guides their lives, teaches them lessons, and saves them from death by having a big party in the sky when it's all over. I know I may seemingly be stepping on toes here, but please understand that I'm stepping on my own toes as well when I say we believe something ridiculous, and that makes it hard. Have you ever thought about finitude? Heavens, what a scary thing. Religion surely eases the pain.

I want to believe in God, and I am pretty sure I do. But we all face those moments of doubt. I think what's most difficult about it is that there will never, ever be anything rational about it. There have, of course, been plenty of attempts to make belief an easier, rational thing: consider, for example, the theory of the First Mover: everything is set in motion (beautiful motion, I might editorially add), so there must have been a first mover. Maybe the world operates on its own today, but one day in the past, Somebody said, "Go." I like that theory; it's comforting. But I don't know how much it helps. There's also that philosophical work called The Wager, which essentially asserts that without God, life is pretty pointless and there's death without redemption at the end, so you might as well believe and hope for meaning. Sensible, right? But believing becomes no easier.

I'm reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It's my latest literary soul food to keep me going in my little dark doubt corner. I like it a lot, though he talks about Satan a little much for my Presbyterian mindset (chuckle, chuckle). But it frustrates me, just like Anne Lamott frustrated me with Traveling Mercies, when someone is so good at saying "I believe in Jesus Christ." Donald Miller emphasizes that something inside him causes him to believe. I'm searching for that something, but I keep looking for it in books on theology and in my own clever musings, both herein and in the songs I write. Thus far, the search proves not as fruitful as I hoped and more frustrating than I would like. But I haven't given up my hope for Hope. I think God's just waiting for me to come around.

I am convinced that there are things in this world which transcend human scientific truth. I feel pretty strongly that the finality of death is less a grand scientific end and more a Grand Beginning. But I'm still looking for the confidence to shout it from the mountaintop. And I will wait, God (and everyone else). I will tell myself to be quiet and I will wait.

Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by Thine help I'm come,
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wand'ring from the fold of God:
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.

Thanks be to God.


P.S. I intend this new blog (which I hope will have a new audience which will make new comments, ahem) to be a place different from my LiveJournal. The narratives of my life will work their ways in, I'm sure, but this is less an online journal and more a irregularly-published column. My apologies to any non-religious who may have found themselves frustrated with the fact that my musings, once artistic and political, have recently been zealous and God-filled. I still have ideas about other things; but These Things keep screaming really loudly for attention, and I find it exceedingly difficult to turn away.