I (still) Do

Right. I'm online at 2303 and I am choosing to blog now while I have this quasi-warm fuzzy feeling. It seems only fair to God to blog when I have joy as well as when I don't, else it will be all unbalanced like.

Incredibly long evening sermon today. Good, nice stories, easy listening, encouraging message... just LONG. Couple of people prayed for me for the week ahead - I've had several hands on me head so I'm all set. Heard a really good Christian trivia (one day I will have a collection of them but that sounds like far harder work than I am prepared to do for now) about oxen too: apparently 2 together pull 27 times as much load as one on it's own. Twenty-seven! That helps me think about being, what's it called, yoked up with the big JC.

Right. Let's cut to the chase. I've officially fallen into a major faith crisis. I can't be arsed to go into the details now, who knows if it will last and it is quite late. Plus, I don't know that I can say it in a nice way and I don't want to offend anyone. However, this is my thinking about it:

A lot of what it is going on is things that I struggled with before Geneva. About how God made us sinful then went and offered us a way out of the condemnation that He created us under in the first place and we're supposed to just accept that and be grateful. OK, I went and said it. In brief anyway, the nature of my doubt isn't really the point. This is something that used to hold me back and, well, it sort of melted into the background in Geneva but it never totally went away. My priorities changed and I could accept things that I didn't understand in light of what I did. Now I am here and it is forwards again and it gets to me. I sit in that church where I used to live (in flats built above, I never used to go though) with this as a genuine struggle and it is easy to come back to that place in my head and wonder why on earth I am now up for trying to be one of "them" when I still don't necessarily agree with some fundamental stuff. And I have an answer to my question.

I got married to Jesus on the 25th May 2008. That is, I got baptised. This means that I effectively said "for better for worse". So now, when I am in that church with my doubts as big and bad if not worse than before, I am sticking to it. 'Cause that is what marriage is about. (This only works, by the way, if you believe that marriage isn't about always being in love but about choosing someone and working at it even in the face of real crapness.)

The analogy isn't perfect. There is no way you can end up with someone that isn't "right for you" or that He will change in this relationship - Jesus, if He is, will be right for everyone and never change. There is no chance of failure on these grounds. I can still dump Him but I figure that the only way this is justified under the strength of the phrase "till death us do part" (nay, the only reason I'd want to under the premise of eternal life) is:
a) He cheats on me. Which is kinda unlikely by definition - everyone can marry Him!
b) He abuses me. Which, by the premise that we don't always know what love from our finite perspective looks like, is frankly annoying hard to prove.
b) He isn't actually real. Which would be an annulment and totally valid I think - you can't marry someone that isn't real.

But I can't use doubt as evidence for Him not being real, 'cause faith wasn't evidence to believe. None of the facts of the situation have changed since we hooked up, no reason to know any better either way. Faith was what I used to make a commitment in the same way that one commits to a husband (or wife); all the doubts or let downs (real or apparent) were in potentia when I said 'I Do'. Sometimes you don't want your husband spouse anymore (well, I can only imagine but it seems *quite* likely that people get to that place at least for a time in their marriage) but that doesn't change what you said at the start and it wasn't totally unthinkable at the time. You have to work at these things when the love or the certainty fades.

Now, if Jesus was a fallible man (or woman) then this would not be as easy to state. The fact is, He is not going to walk away from me if I get on His nerves too much or don't pull my weight (nor just be a mean bastard). This is no reason to not try but it is a comfort in a place of confusion. OK, it may be a "reason" to not try when I'm in a place of apathy but I am trying to not let that happen too many hours in the day.

There may be something that one day counts as evidence for God's non-existence. Then He can consider us over. But the difference between now and before, though the doubts look the same, is that I am committed. So I am not waiting for proof with faith in His lack of existence (for I believe it takes faith to decide no to God) but instead I have faith in his existence (albeit sinusoidal) and would need actual proof of non-existence in order to walk. Without which I am committed to the worse, in the real hope that it will one day be better forever.

I can see why Derek was so keen for me to get dunked...!