Who am I?
Big question. Over-dramatic maybe, but it conveys the weight I’d like it to.
Since leaving my home town of London, and the leadership of a post-evangelical church, I’ve been walking a path of church and Christian faith deconstruction. And now, I’m not entirely sure where I stand on anything.
Technorati Tags: church, christian, deconstruction, emerging
Until a few years ago I was a card-carrying Evangelical Christian. True, I’ve never been a typical hard-liner, I’ve never been anywhere near the right-wing ones that always make the headlines in the U.S. and I’ve never given out tracts in the street or made use of a soap-box. But I would still say that I was a religious conservative in the Christian sense.
And now, I have to say that I would never have predicted that I would be in the spiritual place that I am now.
The bizarre thing is that it would be good for me to blog about this right here on my website. However, two things until recently have prevented me from doing so.
- Lack of time and motivation. I’m great at pro-crastinating (it’s one of my many skills) and I’m finding myself less able to make time to get on the computer these days.
- Funnily enough, it’s not the total strangers or new friends that I mind revealing this stuff too, it’s the good friends from my ex-churches back home and round the world that I am hesitant to reveal this part of myself to. Not because of their condemnation (there wouldn’t be much or any) but because I don’t really want to upset them.
But I suppose that they are foolish reasons. And so I am trying to make a start here to discuss my thoughts and feelings online in written format. I hope that there will be comments and discussion of the constructive kind.
Many reasons and thoughts have brought me here, but here are some important points to make clear:
- I am hesitant to call myself a Christian at the moment. The furthest I might be persuaded to go is ‘a Christian – of sorts.’
- I am bored of my faith of the last 13 years. It’s shallow, lacks due thought in many areas, tries to make me someone who I’m not (as in the ‘cookie cutter’ mentality), lacks authenticity (this is a major point for me) and does not address all areas of my life appropriately. And this is not just me, this is my tradition.
- I’ve hardly read my bible for several months, and I feel fine. Great, even.
- This is all a positive thing. I am definitely progressing and developing as an individual and deepening my spirituality in a major way. I feel happier, more myself and more liberated than I have done for several years.
- I have really started to realise that huge amounts of what I thought was gospel was just cultural and western philosophical conditioning due to a handful of influential people down through history (e.g. St. Augustine) and it is quite possible that this was not what God wanted us to hear/believe.
- The western church still sucks, period.
- I have not come to the previous conclusion because I have been ‘burned’, rejected or hurt by anyone in the church or the church itself (as compared with nearly all who share my views or more anti-Christian views, who have). I have come to this conclusion by walking a path that I strongly believe God has led me down to begin with.
- I have come to realise, however, that much of my spirituality, thoughts and actions, was based on duty and what I thought I should be doing. e.g. “Christians shouldn’t get drunk, it say’s that in Ephesians, therefore I won’t.”, or “I should be reading my bible and have a ‘quiet time’ with the Lord every day”. For me, this just isn’t good enough.
I think that’s enough for now. Feels better to have that out in the open, if only to myself and strangers!
Hey Tom
Interesting thoughts. Here is my 2c (AUD) worth: my experience of faith has been a spiral – I keep coming back to things I thought I had left, though at a deeper level. I think.
Also: You’re on holidays! Don’t feel you have to do lots of holy stuff.
It is brave of you to share this thought process with all of us but what could be braver still is to take time to reacquaint yourself with the person you’re considering leaving by re-reading some parts of the bible. I think the bible is powerful and it doesn’t matter which part you read. But if I were asked to recommend some parts I would say Jonah, because he got so very angry about things, Philemon because it’s about someone who left his job, travelled long distances and made big changes, and of course at least one whole gospel because the name you’re considering dropping comes from Jesus after all. Please don’t think I recommended those books because I think you’re ‘running away’. I think you’re honestly facing up to the fact you’ve been drifting away and searching for whether you want to do that. And please, if you do read any part of the bible, don’t jump to the same old standard conclusions about what it all means. Read things in big chunks, several times over with a few days in between. It’s just that by giving up the bible at the same time as the church with all its huge problems you could be in danger of doing the equivalent of divorcing your wife without looking into her eyes and figuring out whether you still love her.
Becky,
You have misinterpreted the post a little. This isn’t a ’stuff the bible, I’m never reading it again’ attitude (i.e. rejection). This is a ,”I don’t have any desire to read it at the moment and therefore I’m not going to” attitude (i.e. taking a break, maybe apathy).
That also means that the books cited about anger directed towards God don’t really hold any extra relevance when compared to other areas of the bible. I also haven’t given up on church. I’m an active member of a Christian group that meets just not on a Sunday – which is refreshing in and of itself.
I do disagree with the analogy of divorcing my wife/eyes etc. Just because I am not reading the bible doesn’t mean I am not communicating with God. I still know what is said in the bible, although I am starting to re-evaluate several interpretations that I have been taught and that I have held myself over the years. But I speak and hear from God in a different way. A more relaxed and natural,unforced way I would say. Funnily enough, this most often occurs when I’m smoking my pipe out on the porch or in the back garden. But then my most important spiritual experiences have never ever been in churches in any case, so this is not surprising.
I will still not read my bible until I really *want* to. I have simply decided that I’m not going to read it just because I feel I *should*. I am fed of a faith that is at least partially fed by duty.
if God started this process with you then you’ll find him all the way along it and at the end of it! its not like you can get away from Jesus being as he is everywhere, good to hear your not afraid of seeing what your faith is made of….keep going, keep us/me posted on how things work out. btw..no not hurt by what you say, actually feel quite happy about your post, just intrigued (if that is how you spell it)
much love to you tom