Emergence of the Unexpected

[Transcribed unedited from undated journal entry]

If there was ever a time to give up the ghost….

When I started out I was only looking for truth, but I think even back then I suspected the bits of information I was trying to piece together were a touch too pat, too shiny, and too perfectly packaged. They started with ‘A-B-C’ or had catchy tag lines or spelled out a virtue. They were easy to remember, even for a third-grader praying her first ‘ABC’ prayer in a tiny cubicle after Miss Mary the Filipino missionary preached to us and sang ‘Jesus Loves You’ in Tagalog. It may have taken a few years for the suspicion to migrate from my subconscious, but I eventually realized that the Great Truth of the Universe – if indeed there is one – probably doesn’t spell out ‘JESUS’ with the first letter of each word. So I kept looking.

I didn’t ever intend to lose my faith. I really thought that in the process of finding the answers to the questions that haunted me most I would be drawn closer to the God whose existence and omniscience I’d always accepted without question. I thought He held the secrets I wanted to know, and that the only reason I didn’t know them was because I wasn’t pursuing Him passionately enough. I’d already tried and failed at all the standard church-recommended exercises for getting holier – self-denial, daily Bible study, excessive Scripture memorization, tearful prayers, weekly recommitments – so I thought maybe if I went at the problem from a new angle….

So I started gathering information to help me form the questions I hoped would lead me to the answers. It sounds complicated, but it’s how I approach any problem that really puzzles me – keep throwing stuff at it and see what sticks. The results were disturbing – especially at first – but I have always believed in an overall pattern of harmony connecting the myriad, far-flung pieces of our lives, and every piece of the puzzle that slid into place did so as part of that slowly-emerging larger picture. I had no idea what that picture was, but it was easy to see when one piece clicked into place next to another.

As I collected more information the picture became ever clearer, and to my surprise it wasn’t anything like the one I’d expected or was ready to believe. So I did a little more thinking and researching and theorizing and fact-gathering, adding and removing pieces as the picture began to grow. Eventually I had to admit to myself that it was time to revise my initial expectations and be willing to accept the painful possibility that everything on which I had built my early life, the framework around which my whole self had been layered, might just be a shiny, God-shaped lie.

That was a very difficult day.

Because I post here, I don’t really have anything to post here. I might try someday anyway. . I don’t accept notes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t comment.