I’m not completely sure what got me started, but lately I’ve been absorbing “Christian thought” at an alarming rate. Feeding this new addiction are the myriad of books, YouTube videos, podcasts, not to mention personal Bible reading and being heavily involved in church life. I find myself asking way too many questions and questioning everything, some questions stemming from doubts, others from past ignorance, and still others out of anger toward Christianity “lived out” on the macro scale, as shoved into my face by CNN and the like, no thanks to Franklin Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention.
I’m frustrated with myself for asking questions this “late in the game”. I’ll be 33 in a month, and I feel like I wasted 20 years by stuffing my questions back into my body, by going with the flow with the bizarre teachings of my Christian church and school, and by growing into adulthood well-acquainted with grace and orthodoxy but truly unsure of how to translate these beautiful things into my worldview and way of life.
I honestly don’t even know where it began. I blame therapy. I had challenged people, the people I was very comfortable with of course, here and there about theological matters, especially my long-suffering seminary student husband. The questions I had been asking though, honestly, were peripheral to the ones I really needed answers to. The ones that meant everything. I have learned and grown a lot through therapy, and my main goal in therapy has been to fight against fear, to be a more brave person. And one of the scariest things for me is to be completely and utterly honest. Even as I type that, I feel the nausea set in, as well as the desire to turn off the computer and maybe wash the dishes for a change. Anything to avoid what’s really going on inside of me.
So, here’s the question I’ve wrestled with, ignored, shoo’d away, buried beneath other less-daunting questions:
Is it possible we’re wrong?
“We’re” meaning the evangelical Christian community, in which I’m fully a part (at least from a membership standpoint).
“Wrong” meaning–wrong about everything. Wrong about God being real, not even getting into “loving” or “Creator” or “desiring community with us”, etc. Wrong about Jesus. Wrong about how salvation works. Wrong about who we let “in” and who we leave “out”. Wrong about the Bible and its authority. Wrong about heaven and/or hell. Wrong about why we’re even on earth. Wrong about how we do church. Wrong about how we treat each other. Wrong about the relationship of our faith and our culture.
This is a dauntingly open-ended question. So I ask a follow up question:
If it’s possible that Christianity is “wrong”, is Christianity still worth the risk?
Baby steps.
Right now, my answer is Yes. Christianity is worth risking being wrong about. Sure, chalk it up to naivete or the fact that I was “born into it”, but in my life I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good”, as they say. I’ve seen lives change before my eyes as a result of the Jesus story. Sometimes Christians suck and they make me angry, and sometimes I suck and I doubt my own growth, but then I see Jesus and believe that he and he alone is enough for me to be okay with being a Christian.
So, that’s where I’m at right now. I’m a Christian because Jesus. I’m betting everything I have on it, because I see no other compelling alternative. But, I still have a lot of other questions, ranging from parts of the Bible that confuse me, to how church should work, to what sin and hell look like, to how I should live and fellowship with others. And for this journey, I’ve been soaking in all kinds of teaching and literature to the point where I’m suddenly exhausted every night and feeling dead when I wake up each morning, head literally aching due to what I’m calling “theology hangover”. Not sure exactly how to cure this other than to drink some coffee and let it ride.