The Time's, They Are A-Changin'

Shortly after I became a Christian I began to realize that something was just not right. I seemed to go through periods of highs and lows in my faith and I thought that was just normal and that everyone did it. But soon my lows began to severely outpace my highs, and in the beginning, I found myself often questioning whether or not there even is a God. To get out of my lows I would often search the internet for Christian material and I would learn something new about my faith and it would fire me up and off I would go to the message boards thinking that I now had the key to converting every last sinner in cyberspace. I had information now that proved I was right, or I had a little anecdote that really described a vital truth that I thought people were missing (because obviously if people didn't agree with me it was because they didn't understand what I was saying.)
At the very beginning it was e-mail forwards that got me revved up. I remember one in particular about a class that was told to bring a picture of someone they were angry at or that they (gasp!) hated, and the teacher put their pictures up on the dartboard and everyone took turns throwing darts at the pictures. Afterwards the teacher took down their pictures and behind it was a holey (yuk-yuk-yuk) picture of Jesus. And I thought "Oh yeah. Hey that's neat. When we throw darts at people we are also throwing darts at Jesus. Therefore Christianity is true!" I forwarded that little nugget of soul-saving truth off to all of my friends in my contacts list. A few of them wrote back with some of the harshest words that were ever spoken to me. Words that people who hate me would hear and say "Whoa. That's a little harsh, dude." And we got into arguments, and I lost some friends at that point.
Eventually I moved on to apologetics. I would read C.S. Lewis and suggest him to all of my hethen friends thinking that if cutesy little e-mail forwards didn't do the trick then surely an Oxford Scholar would do the trick. Some people refused to even look at him and others suggested that he was one of the worst arguers in the world and that only an idiot would be taken in by his lies. (I think that's taking it a little far actually but whatever.) I presented arguments about how the Bible was put together by 40 different authors, comprising of 66 books, written over thousands of years and is completely congruent. I soon found out that not all people believe the Bible to be completely congruent, or that it was written by 66 authors, or that it took thousands of years.
Later still I found my faith under attack by my college professors, most of whom flatly stated that since evolution was true, Christianity could not be; and also, science had disproved miracles, including explaining the 10 plagues of Egypt (mind you their explanation fails because it only explains how the river could have turned red and not how the water in all the Egyptian basins but not the Israelite ones could have, but that's beside the point.) I almost fell to this attack, but while searching the internet I came across some people who believed that the earth was only six thousand years old and that it was created in six days. Most importantly they had lists of quotes from evolutionists admitting that evolution was either not the water tight theory/fact that we were taught it was, or even some that said it had been proven impossible!!
Well, you better believe I copied those quotes wholesale and pasted them in every discussion forum I knew of. And I hit the post button with a grim satisfaction as I imagined the jaws of all the damned evolutionist-atheists hitting their respective computer desks as their evolutionary worldview crumbled around them.
I waited impatiently for the first response so that I could start witnessing to these poor lost souls. And the first one I got was something like this. "What are you fu*%&ng stupid? Those quotes don't prove anything! They were taken out of context (which considering that taking things out of context is their favourite means of biblical interpretation I was a bit surprised to read.) And even if some weren't, it only proves that one scientist is as stupid as you. Die already. Your impeding our species evolutionary progress." (I think that he failed to understand that, if evolution were true, he still would never experience being more evolved than he was now and therefore impediment of evolution shouldn't really concern him. But whatever.)
My studies of creation continued and as you may have read in my previous post, I moved on to more qualified websites run by real scientists with real degress from secular Universities. I figured that people would at least have to accept that not all "thinking" people were evolutionists and that they would give ear to the arguments made by people much more qualified than themselves. But, as with the previous cases, my vision was left unrealized as I received insult after insult for stating my views.
By this point in time I was beginning to develop a caustic attitude toward people. I would argue for the sake of arguing, I would enter debates I didn't really care about just to fight with people. And I bore real pains from the comments of people who I felt I was trying to help. At this point I realized that I was doing it but I was so angry that I didn't care. I just wanted to rile them up.

But not too long ago I read a book about relational Christianity called "So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore" by Jake Colson (Which is actually a combination of two guys names, but I don't remember their names right now.) It's main thrust was getting away from institutionalized Christianity and into a relationship with each other and with Christ that most people only ever dream of. One of the big points was learning to trust God with EVERYTHING in your life. About trusting that God will ensure we have enough to get through today, though he made not have made his provisions for two weeks from now clear. If you think you believe in God here's a thought experiement for you. If you felt that something you were doing at work was in violation of what Christ would want for you, would you quit your job on the spot and trust God to carry you through your day to day life until he saw fit to bless you with another job ? (And it's a possibility that he may never do that.) If your answer is not an emphatic yes then it would seem that you don't fully trust God, or fully believe in him. Or at the very least you are not following him with all that you have. God said he would take care of you and provide you with what you need to get through the day. If you can't put everything, including your finances and sense of security into God's hands then you don't trust him to fulfill that promise.

But what does this have to do with what I began writing about? Well, there was a point in the book where the main character, Jake, was admonished by the teacher character, John, to stop always trying to push his beliefs on other people. John wasn't endorsing pluralism (the idea that there is more than one path to God), he was just saying that out job is just to help people along on their journey. It's up to the Spirit of God to convict and change people and He's doing it in the most efficient way possible. When witnessing becomes about getting other people to agree with you more than it is about sharing Christ's love and helping them to be set free from the bondage of sin and society (including institutionalized church), we are only getting in God's way.

It is one of the most freeing feelings I've had in years to realize that I don't need to make people believe what I do. That all is not lost if people don't believe in a literal creation or even if they leave conversations with me believing there is no God. I no longer feel the intense need to have my beliefs confirmed by other people. I no longer feel that I have to be hard as a rock, never admitting that I could be wrong, as if admitting it would make it so, or not admitting it would do the opposite.

I think "church" as most people understand it doesn't help people to get past these things. "Church" is a passive thing where we go and we perform a comfortable (if boring) routine and we get told how it is. We are taught that the person standing at the front has a special annointing from God and that whatever they say is true. We believe that since they went to school that they know more than we can about the Bible. And that may be true in all of the senses that don't matter such as various ways in which it is translated, how it came to be put together and so on. But the real teacher of all truths that you hold dear is the Holy Spirit and he was poured out on to all believers. That's not to say that you can't learn anything from anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. No matter who you are, you can learn something from everyone. Or such is my belief. Take it or leave it, or take some and leave the rest. But I feel that I'm on a better path than I was simply because I no longer feel bound by the truth, but set free instead.