Reflections 8: Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn

I was pretty much through with church, mostly through with church people. I was getting more and more worked up. I would still go though. Today I would still go.

I smoked a few cigarettes to try and calm down.

As I sat in the congregation I couldn't focus. I couldn't take it. I didn't need to back further down, I was becoming aware that I was at the end of my rope. There was nothing left to hold onto.

A bulletin informed me that there would be a seminar series starting. It was conducted by a pastor with a degree in theology, in history, and a phD in philosophy. He would be addressing some of those issues that confront people that are having trouble reconciling their pithy faith with the real world. His sessions were especially pointed at students who were confronting real intellectual problems in their first years of university.

I signed up for every session.

Let it be said that, despite what may sound to you a mostly emotional tendency on my part to get away from faith, I was also a student confronting intellectual barriers. I wasn't, however, just the regular first year student hitting philosophical errors for the first time served up fresh from a vehement atheist prof. I'm not an intellectual, but I did read books. I had spent three semesters studying theology, exegesis and biblical history at seminary. I had the advantage of a world-view shift from Canada to working in environments steeped in Catholic, Anglican, western protestant, and indigenous paganism and culturally “other” experiences. The world was big and complicated, and I wasn't a first year student fresh out of my Christian high-school with my pop as pastor and mom and housemaid. My background, like any-ones, was distinct and I couldn't expect everything to translate.

I also had a few years on the average freshman. People would say I'm young, and I am, but they also say that the twenties are the years of your life, and I'm almost half way through mine. If they promise to be prime, you'd think I should make some calls to make sure I'm making good my years.

The leader of this seminar series said that he was helping young people make paradigm shifts through a time in their lives when their brains weren't completely formed. Apparently completion doesn't happen until you are mostly through your twenties (and most of those “good years” are gone.) He wanted to make sure no one gave up their faith without giving it the fair run that it deserved.

I won't disagree with him, but I will say that with all the running, its hard to imagine, some days, that it's going somewhere.

He said that many of these young students want to give up their weak faith partially became there is a party going on in the next dorm, and they really want to get high and laid. As fun as those things would be, I am not really that kid. I have been holding on to the morals attached to my faith quite religiously in hope that doing so is worthwhile- even while many of my contemporaries (many of whom also seem to have no problem still identifying as “Christian” by the way) have not. Can you blame me, however, for courting abandonment. Its viable. In which case, hell, maybe my morals don't have the value I thought they did either.

But as I said, hedonism is not my lone motivator.

At the least, these seminars have proved that there are some Christians who really work out their faith, who directly confront everything and yet don't find the crux compromised at the end of the day. Its challenging. I can see why so many people fall on pat answers. The truth is much harder to work with.

I might have reached the end of my rope, but there might be another rope, and it might be longer.