Conscience calls

When I became a Christian I promised Jesus that I would follow him. I probably didn't realize till later that this meant following him wherever he would lead me. I think of the disciple fishermen who dropped their nets and lives to follow the divine mystery. As I sit here, lost after a church service themed Uganda/Kabubbu, I feel a weight on my heart and a desperation in my gut. I am confronted repeatedly by the choice I have made, everything in my being screaming the question: when is it time to leave everything behind for the gospel?

If I were called before the judgement seat of God now and asked about it, I would say that I feel as though I should throw in the towel and leave this church behind to follow Jesus. That sometimes I feel as though it is black and white, and that as a married couple we make it more complicated than it really is with our thoughts and compromises and analyses. That this place is a dead end, that this is not where the gospel will be served through us, that it is a waste of time for us. I would pour my heart and soul out to him with all the anger, pain, and disillusionment that I have carried inside me for so long; I would tell him that the more I look at it, the more I see role modelled in this church an obsession about superficialities, church services and performances, all worldly values veiled in the jargon of English Christendom, all the worse for the fact that they are marketed under the banner of church. I would tell him that my conscience is telling me to follow him where he leads me, far away from here, deep into the bowels of need and injustice, into honest community and humble service to each other and to him.

Sometimes I wish I could cry it out, that it were easier to explain how much this hurts. I find myself wondering why we put ourselves through this torture - the torture of being part of a system where the gospel is not the vision of a blind institution that perpetuates all sorts of rubbish in the name of Christ - when we could be taking upon ourselves the divine torture of living out the gospel, with all the hardship and suffering that comes part and parcel of joyfully seeking God's will. I wonder why we are choosing this futile, ungodly torture over the torture of the Christian journey, when we have been put on this earth for a finite time by our Maker to live out the gospel for him, when our world slowly crumbles and people die by the second and creation cries out for us to be God's hands and feet in the broken world that he loves so much.

I feel like more and more I have to tranquilize my heart, mind, and conscience in order to exist in this institution, and sometimes I wonder to God whether it is killing me. Suddenly I am painfully aware that all this is a waste of time and a ludicrous farce pointlessly sustaining itself in the name of church, while billions of our brothers and sisters, made of the same flesh and blood as us, with hopes and dreams and desires just like we do, live in desperation and need. If this is the way it is supposed to be, if this is the gospel and the church that Jesus wanted, then I don't want any part of it. But this is not the way he wants it to be, and I always knew it.

We read Isaiah 58 tonight and it was torture. I sat operating the laptop, surrounded by sound systems, PAs, technology, and stressed out musicians performing and acting in the quest for perfection rather than the love of God and neighbour - all this culture the centre of our leader's obsession and mind space. And my conscience punched my heart and my heart shouted at my head and everything in me knew that I had no idea what I was doing there.

I made my choice long ago to follow Jesus. I just don't know when it is time to give up on this church to do it.

Interview

I have an interview for an internship with Toybox next Thursday and I am starting to feel a little unsettled. In truth I don't feel as though I have really let the whole thing settle in fully. I wonder whether this feeling is quite typical amongst people who have been out of work for a significant period of time. It is hard to maintain the focus and motivation, it has been hard for me to leap out of the mindset of being a slob with few engagements and responsibilities beyond the movements of mundane everyday life. And now it is real; I have an actual interview, where they will assess my suitability and capability, and judge me accordingly. I may have my hopes dashed or my disappointments reinforced. I have to admit I am starting to feel a little bit scared.

I think I know the peace of God in a way that I didn't the last time I interviewed for a job. I know now that things can hit rock bottom in a very real sense of the word, so whatever happens, I will get through it and everything really will be alright. I trust God. It is strange how we can have this trust and still feel this kind of fear, where our successes and failures can throw us in our core. It is strange how even though I know it is not about me, these things do affect me.

My stakes in this are not high, but whenever I get myself invested in something, I become afraid. I fear that the joy and anticipation of hope will become the bitter hurt of disillusionment, that I will have set myself up for a bit of a fall. I feel ill-equipped and inadequate sometimes when I look at the job description. I am unsure what to expect. I know things will work out if they are meant to - how else have I ended up here but for the grace and provision of God? - but I know the truth is that I could end up being rejected, and then all the statements and provisional plans we will have made about me going back into employment will be shown to be empty.

I suppose this is the difficulty of putting yourself out there, hoping you will get something in return.

I have to remind myself that if I didn't get this internship, it would just mean nothing had changed, that life would just go on as it already did. Which wouldn't be that bad, right? (There's always Skyrim!) From that perspective, I don't really have anything to lose.

It just sometimes feels like there is, that's all.

He wears our shoes

So much has happened in the past few months, inside me and around me. I feel like I am not who I was 6 months ago. I wish I could capture it all in words and put it in this blog, so I could look back on everything and see the journey and the process I recorded.

There is a great comfort in the knowledge that God knows us all. God knows how many hairs are on our head. Before we think a thought, He knows it completely. To quote Sufjan Stevens, he wears our shoes. I have learned that God knows my heart, better than I ever will. Sometimes I have to throw my hands in the air and rest in the knowledge that He understands me when I am knocking my head against the wall in frustration at how little I understand my own ways. He knows me. He is my closest friend.

When I was growing up and all the turmoil in me was taking its reign, I didn't understand what people meant when they told me that God was using all this to make me stronger, that I would learn from everything that happened and it would make me better, because in God's strength I would get through it. When I look back now, I see that it was because I never really got through any of it. All the wounds from the past were still there, in a different form maybe, less gaping and less raw, but still there. It only took circumstance and events to topple me over again to go through the same pain over and over again. It wasn't a wonder that I couldn't understand the point of going through the motions only to repeat the same cycles. Perseverance doesn't come easy when you don't have much hope in what you're striving for.

Funny how God's timing works. I honestly don't understand how I got through it. In the past 6 months I feel that I have had every layer of my life and identity stripped away. Then somewhere along the way, quite remarkably and randomly, peace and contentment came. It was like a veil lifted and I felt more myself, more content, than I had ever felt in my 23 years of living. I honestly don't know what it was that made the change.

And there it is. God came through for me. Every promise that He made came through, seemingly randomly but in His timing, when my experiences had brought me to the point that He deemed most appropriate. And now I think I can understand why. I am young, and there is much to learn in life that only comes with time. And trusting in God is a hard concept to really grasp until everything that you take for granted (and don't realize that you have) is taken away.

I realize now that I do love God, and above all other things, I want to be more like Jesus. I feel like I couldn't have said this at other points in my life. I don't think I realized that I was following Him for the wrong reasons.

It is a great comfort to know that He understands it all.

In the end, what are we really except tiny, finite human beings, conditioned and pulled to and fro by all sorts of influences, some that we see, some what we have no idea of? We don't know what we do; we do the things we hate. We think we make choices, we cling to the certainty of our opinions. But what do we know about ourselves really? We are so small. We are dust.

I feel humble in the presence of God, small and yet precious. We are wretched and we are beautiful, says Shane Claiborne. I feel like God has allowed me to grasp this, and to see this more in other people too; He has opened my eyes to experience His love so that I can try harder to love others like He does. Perhaps there is nothing that drives one more to compassion and forgiveness than the knowledge that you are no different from your enemy, and yet you are freed by love. The knowledge that we are all beggars.

I still have questions and doubts. I always will. I wait at at the heels of a God who is a revolutionary mystery, the eternal question mark, the great unknown. I am angry and broken, just like the next person. God says, I will be who I will be.

I am very grateful to God for the journey, and for His patience while I am on it.