I’ve been so overwhelmed with details lately that I just feel like letting my brain take a little walk this morning. So come on along… 🙂
Aside from pastor friends and others who question whether I’ve lost my salvation…there is (or was, at first) a little bit of personal concern I had in my journey away from the beaten paths of institutional Christianity.
I sort of have this contradiction going on inside me where I desire to explore and blaze trails and do new things–question the status quo–but at the same time, life has conditioned me to “go along to get along.” So even while trying to be a reformer of sorts, I’ve still tended to walk well inside the lines–to “play ball” to gain favor with the powers that be. I’ve been a “good boy”. And when my conscience started dragging leading me along this different road, I quickly achieved “bad boy” status among the kinds of people who used to affirm me. So while searching for the truth inside all the mess, inside I’ve had this internal wrestling match going on as well, and seasons of second guessing–because I have this tendency to believe an authority figure who tells me I am bad, whether or not they are correct.
So, yeah–at times, I’ve questioned my own heart. Am I just being rebellious? Am I truly backsliding just because my walk of faith doesn’t look like that of the “churched” anymore? Am I losing more than just my religion?
Okay, so I’m paranoid. Whatever.
Even so…of course I still believe. And not only that, but I have a relationship. I’ve often wondered, in fact, about people who were once Christians who now claim to be atheists or agnostics, what it is that changes their mind or heart. I might second-guess my own direction, but I think I could never second-guess the existence of God. I might get mad as hell at God when He doesn’t do what I expect Him to, but I have seen/known/experienced too much to just decide He is fictitious.
And yet…once in awhile I hear about a Christian claiming to be an agnostic or something. And at first, I’m like, no you’re not. That’s a contradiction. I mean, isn’t that like saying, “I’m a skinny overweight person” or “I’m a conservative liberal” or “I’m a tolerant bigot?” It doesn’t make sense.
But in a book recently I saw the word “agnostic” used a little differently than I’d heard before; the book said that many Bible scholars are “agnostic” about end-time prophecy in the Bible.
“Agnostic” literally means, “not knowing”. In other words, those scholars are admitting that they don’t know what the prophecies mean.
We think of an agnostic as someone who questions the existence of God, who claims not to know whether God exists–and that’s how most agnostics would describe themselves. But what about that larger meaning? What if there’s more than just the question of if God exists–like who He is or what He is like? Or how He does what He does? Or how He can be everywhere at once, and know every thought of every person, without losing His own mind? Or how He can be a God of love and a God of judgment at the same time?
When I think of it that way, and looking at my own journey…I have to say there’s a lot I thought I knew that I really don’t. I mean, as a young zealot in the faith, I had more answers than questions; but now I have more questions than answers. And what I think I know, I don’t hold nearly so tightly as I used to. And I certainly don’t let those things define me.
Now…there are some things I believe, and some things I firmly believe, to the point of saying that I “know”. I can’t see myself being an atheist because there is this inner knowing about God’s existence that I can’t shake. To deny Him would be to deny my own convictions, my own soul.
But other things I thought I knew about Him? Things I thought were obvious that really weren’t? That’s a different story.
So I guess what I’m getting at is that perhaps there is a difference between being agnostic about certain things, and being AN agnostic–a person who is defined by what he/she does not know (specifically, questioning God’s existence).
I have to admit–for all I think I know of God, there is so much more that I do not know. So I guess, from a certain point of view I am agnostic (that is, not knowing)–even though I am not AN agnostic.
A Christian who does not know everything.
Perhaps, if we are honest, we’ll have to admit that all of us are a little bit agnostic.
How about you? What are you agnostic about?
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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It's the ones who claim to have it all figured out that scare me.
in that case i think every Christian i've ever met is an agnostic.
Co-heir,
I agree.
Shallowfrozenwater,
Using that definition of "agnostic", I'm inclined to agree with you–except that lots of Christians don't know that they don't know. 🙂
What am I agnostic about? I am agnostic, in this new definition, about other people's spiritual experience. Forgive me.
When someone relays a story about God's leading…well God's speaking to them actually like.. "it's not me, it was GOD" or "the Holy Spirit gave me the words to say" I feel: 1) curious as to HOW God communicated 2)puzzled about WHY I don't get any messages I can directly point to GOD as the source, 3) wonder if they are lying(exaggerating). I often ask the speaker about it because, of course, I want whatever I am missing, and then this peaceful, knowing, answer leaves me even more puzzled – "you'll just know." okay…
Sometimes I try to trump up a sequence of circumstances that I believe led me to an idea about service, or a call to make or something, as being "God-ordained." You know like "open doors" "closed doors" etc. Sometimes I am so far off that it is laughable and I hope God has that sense of humor everyone says he has.
When I first decided to think about Jesus, my dog Albert was constipated for 4 days and very sick. I prayed "if this is true God, this whole believing Jesus Christ thing, make my poor dog take a dump" You know the end of this story. Albert did, and I believed. Was that a God-ordained bowel-movement? I tend to witness to that idea.
But WE are trying! Trying to understand, trying to serve God, trying to be lead by the Spirit, trying to be lights shining in the darkness. WE just need to be authentic. People see through us and we do a disservice to the very one we really want to honor.
I do believe that I believe. Thank God for that. I love to sing those worship songs, but hate it when I lie in a song. Sometimes I am so far from committing my whole life("in all I do I honor You") that it might be dangerous.
God – give me a grateful heart Lord please so I can praise you with honest, holy lips. I want to worship you with my life Lord, with my existence. I want YOU to be my addiction forever. More of You and less of me.
Set me free from my prison,
that I may praise your Name.
Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me" Ps 142v7
and also…I have to go to work now and I can't wait to get home and read this entire blog!!! Can you tell I am new here?
I appreciate your thought process, and your well chosen words.
thank you tzilla. strange to get any kind of positivity these days!
when I went to work and was thinking about my post yesterday I realized I probably stepped on a lot of toes and I can really only go on MY own experience. Who knows what is down the line for me. I just want everyone to be sincere about their experience so people (Christians) don't have to doubt their very salvation or standing w/God. Maybe that is natural though.
again – off to work. lots of things I could be an agnostic about. Hell-literal or figurative language? Who wants to to just dismiss non-believing loved ones that may be suffering after death with a phrase like "all our tears will be wiped away" There's more there to figure out. Way more. Sometimes when I research something I feel like such a traitor, when I only want truth.
I love that Jesus didn't condemn Thomas, but let him touch his wounds. WE really aren't called to understand everything but that He loves us and can change our lives. I have have to refer back to that all the time….like what He has done in people's lives. That's real.
God bless
Gail, and Gail, and Gail, 🙂
Glad to have you here. I appreciate your honest statements, and gauging from what I know of the regular readers, I doubt many toes were stepped on at all. 🙂 I do believe I hear God's voice and am led by the Spirit, but first, it's hard to describe…and second, I don't get it right all the time, either. It's not a science. And your observations reflect kind of the lifelong struggle we disciples have–how to hear God's voice, and how do we KNOW it's God's voice? 🙂 Thank God He doesn't fall off His throne when we miss it.
I think on one side people try to overanalyze the hearing-from-God thing as though it were a method, or as if our finite minds could truly grasp an infinite Being. And then on the other side are those who are so into spooky spirituality, intuitively "picking up" and "sensing" things in the spirit, to the point that God can "say" two opposite things in the same breath. (If you took it at face value, you'd have to conclude God was schizophrenic!) I personally believe that truth and honesty lie somewhere between these extremes. 🙂 Anyhow…thanks for sharing your thoughts here.
tzilla,
Thanks. God bless.