The Fear of Questioning Everything

The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.
I didn't really struggle much with my sexuality prior to coming out to myself. I was so far in the back of the closet, I think I remember visiting one afternoon with a faun named Tumnus. Basically, I was in another world, psychologically, and that probably preserved my sanity growing up.

I never allowed myself to much consider the feelings and thoughts of my own heart and what it really meant to who I was as a person.

After coming out to myself, I reconciled my faith and sexuality fairly seamlessly in a matter of two or three months. There was about a 20-something year prep period for that sudden realization, however.

One of the things I have struggled a bit with is challenging and questioning everything I believe.

Over the last weeks, I have been reading M. Scott Peck's classic, The Road Less Traveled. Toward the end of the book, the author makes this insightful observation.

The road to spiritual growth, however, lies in...distrusting what we already
believe, by actively seeking the threatening and unfamiliar, by deliberately
challenging the validity of what we have previously been taught and hold dear.

As I mentioned in the previous post, many of us struggle with this process because in normal religious training, we're often discouraged from questioning authority.

Think about this, though. God does not need you to protect Him from your own questioning. Truth is never threatened. Men and the power with which they influence others is threatened.

In fact, God seems welcoming of our questions and uncertainties. Try me. Test me. Prove me. This is His plea--over and over again. Why?

God yearns for you and you alone. He does not need to manipulate you. He loves you.

Free will. The sincerest test of true love, and the most benificent gift of grace.

Embracing Grace

I use Google Reader to keep up with several blogs that I like to read. One of the ones that I've found interesting is Eugene's blog entitled Paradoxy. What a great title for a blog describing the growth it takes to reconcile one's sexuality and Christian faith.

Several of his recent posts are pertinent to the conversation I've been having on (and off) this blog. In the post entitled Total Surrender, he talks about legalism in the context of normal human nature.

This is a fascinating idea, because I just finished reading the biography of Jay Bakker (son of Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker), Son of a Preacher Man. In it, he describes what happened to his parents in the 1980's. What struck me, though, was the way that his dad's poor choices seemed to be "preyed upon" by other up- and-coming preachers, who turned out to be the bulwark of the Christian Right, the Moral Majority and modern evangelicalism.

Many of these men, and pastors across the country who took their cues from them, openly ridiculed and mocked the Bakkers during their time of greatest personal suffering (both personal and private). They used their pulpits as literal bully-pulpits, instead of pronouncing the amazing grace of God--God our Father and Redeemer!

It's interesting to see the inherent need we humans have for creating "rules, boundaries, and concrete structure." Eugene goes on to point out that this tendency extends to an attempt to manipulate others to comply and follow the rules.

In his book, Jay tells about the weight of this manipulation by godly, well-intentioned people, after he began his return to God. Attempting to lay aside the bitterness and hatred that he'd harbored all through his teenaged years, he found that when he came back to the church as a wounded and hurting spirit, he still could not "measure up" under the expectations of others.

But then he experienced God's grace! Jay says that before that time it had been "nothing more than a song." Grace truly is amazing.

Yet it's a fearful thing. It requires complete trust--the kind of trust that is the only way-maker for the true lordship of Christ in a believer's life.

But how do we switch from the way we've been taught to live, and embrace God's grace? That is the question Eugene addresses in the subsequent post called, Freedom in Practice. If grace is Christ's example, how do we follow it in "real life," especially when most everyone who's maintaining the spiritual status quo will probably separate themselves from us?

You see, when you grow in grace, it makes me uncomfortable, because you are alive and you are growing. I am made aware of my lack of growth, and I will respond one of two ways: either I will embrace your growth, become your cheerleader and will begin a revival in my own soul. Or, I will despise your growth because I am embarrassed of my own shortcoming, I will seek for a way to slow or stop your growth; and when that fails, I will alienate you.

But grace is the "gift of God." It's the way of salvation ("by grace you are saved through faith"). Grace is "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us".

Sometimes we forget. But grace is the gift. We either embrace it or we can reject it. We either embrace His love and offer it to others, or we withhold it from them because we cannot receive it ourselves.