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I’m driving over the speed limit with the windows down and my hair is blowing wild like some kind of untamed animal. I’m not driving too, too fast, just fast enough to be the in the left lane but slow enough to not get pulled over. It’s something you’ve got to master, takes a few speeding tickets to work itself out. Mostly my head is in the clouds where it often resides. The day should feel perfect because the moment certainly feels perfect. Somehow I find myself in an awkward tension that I’m quite frankly sick of wrestling with.
I’m thinking and silently admitting that I’m not sure if I believe in God in this very moment. I should be thinking about how it’s Saturday and the world feels good or where I’m going to eat for lunch and what current movie seems worth nine dollars. But I’m stuck in a harder place than I’d like to be. And when I ask myself whether or not I believe in God, I want to get at the truth, I want to know if I really, deep in the core of my fibers, believe. I don’t just sort of want to agree with how awesome Jesus lived and think His thoughts were the best humanity has ever seen; I need to be more than okay with the entire story of God. It’s easy to shake my head “yes” and mouth the words to the songs I already know, but it’s a whole different game to acknowledge my doubts, my uncomfortable feelings about the God I’m following with my life. Somehow, I know that I can come to God with my difficult questions because I believe that He is big enough and thick-skinned enough to walk through them with me. And I also know that someone has to be honest about this stuff, honest about having been a Christian for more than half of their life and sometimes still in the trenches of unsettling questions.
The hard pill for me to swallow is this: when I’m real with myself I see that I ignore the parts of Christianity that I don’t like while clinging to the elements that bring me to life. I’d like to take scissors to the New Testament text where Ananias and Sapphira are killed instantly for lying about how much money they received in some archaic real estate deal. And I’d like to take the ugly clothes of genocide off of the story of God, the part where God commands to completely destroy the Amalekites for their disobedience. In the specific passage I’m referring to God says, “kill both man and woman, child and infant…” (1 Samuel 15:3). But on the other side, I’d like to stencil the teachings of Jesus on the highest skyscrapers of every city. I can only beg for a tattoo of the words “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you…” to engrain my heart so I never forget about how much better Jesus lived than Mother Theresa and Gandhi combined.
The problem is, is that Jesus says the only way to the Father is through Him. Get to the Father via the Son. I can’t take the parts I like and discredit the ones I don’t. In doing that, I discredit the entire story of grace, the story of humanity, really.
In the midst of every difficult question, this I believe: Jesus is the new expression of God on Earth. He is the manifestation of absolute love and the best chance we’ve got at living lives that count for something. And so, I must learn not to ignore the parts of the Bible that I don’t like, but rather see it as a story of progress. The pieces line up and happen as they do in order for things to be made right. I recently visited a church in New York City where they have a saying, “joining God in the renewal of all things.” This helps me understand why God did things the way He did and remember that His desire has always been to restore and renew all things. Every story in the Old Testament points back to a movement toward the renewal for the characters at play. Even in the midst of the Amalekites, God’s desire was to renew all things; to make them right and better, to restore what had been lost. And that’s the same today, through Jesus, God is at work renewing the world around us; but it’s a process and processes can be messy and fragmented.
When I have fresh perspective it doesn’t eliminate some of the questions, it doesn’t make them magically disappear. I will never be completely satisfied with some of the strings attached to the story of God, but this I know: His love is deep and it’s real and everything within me needs to be saved from myself. There is something about existing within the breathing room; with being honest that we don’t know everything and that sometimes our questions feel overwhelming. It’s important to let ourselves have minds that wrestle with the things that we’ve been told are true for our whole lives. And we’re only kidding ourselves if we don’t admit that our faith and our doubt both find homes in the mixed bag we carry throughout our lives.
On most days there’s a dueling dragon in my heart. Meaning, I’m unsatisfied without knowing (or liking) why God wiped out entire people groups or why there isn’t a cure for cancer, while being satisfied in the context of the longings of my soul. Sometimes it’s more important to know that I’m being held and cared for by a God that loves me than having the answer to all the questions.
And so, sometimes I have to step away from the drawing board and reframe the picture. Sometimes I have to believe that God is who he says He is, “The LORD, the LORD! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.” I have to walk away from some of my elementary doubt as I realize that even with my questions I’ve yet to find a better way to live. I’ve yet to find something that carries the weight of this life or someone who heals the wounds of the day like the Father. I’ve yet to find any hope in life aside from the solid rock of Jesus. And that I can’t deny, that, at the end of the day will keep me coming back to God the Father and Jesus the Son.
Questions still present, and not completely aside, I have to commit to the One who has already committed to love me more than I’ll ever believe.
Artwork: Aaron Mclaughlin
sometimes i need a helicopter to hover over my head,
send down a rope and get me out of all this choppy, clustered water.
because sometimes the days get weak and trudge with too many excuses,
the sun seems to set on every lingering hope
and i can’t seem to tug at my bootstraps anymore
can’t stand the sight of my cliche knuckles, too white, too cracked
and there are days when all my eyes can see is the smallness everything,
nights that my body can’t sleep,
because i’m in cheapest room of my heart, an attic with cobwebs,
with walls coming undone,
and i’ve been trying to sleep, but my legs toil with dreams undone
i wrestle with cotton sheets, the in-between night and day
my heart repeats:
there’s got to be more than grace before meals
and prayers before bed.
and so i take two aspirin and study the geography of a new storyboard
one that the world hasn’t yet seen,
press my binoculars to a plot line that has yet to be invented-
a story where the angels fight hard for us, lift us out of dusty places
hold our hands, kiss our foreheads, keep us warm.
a story where the dangerous ones, the not-a-sure-bet ones,
the messed up good like me get the best love of all
they get to wear new coats of honor, new hats of truth
they get new faces of dignity, scare away the curses of a dead life
and when it becomes clear, when the ink meets the paper, the plot falls into place, i say:
hold out your hands, let’s give each other the seeds
so we can start the gardens we meant to plant
before we got hurt and broken and bruised long ago
hold out your hearts, let’s give each other the keys
that set us free
if you were a sinking ship in the story that you’re living,
some kind of broken vessel among the fleet of masses,
i would gather all the birds of the sky so they could string you to safety
they’d lift you out of the misery of the untamed sea
and onto the shore just beyond your reach.
you’d be out of the tide of a nasty grasp, the waves of no compromise
and if the birds didn’t work, if they couldn’t pull off such a feat,
i’d summon all of heaven’s angels to get you out of your mess
and without fail they’d get you to where you belong, on the fold of dry land
and if you fell from grace every day for the rest of our lives
i’d still walk beside you in every unheroic battle
carrying truth and love in my bag and i’d ration without restraint-
if you needed to detox your spirit from the infamy of distraction
after you got swallowed up in uncertainty, in the long days of life,
i’d hold your hand and let you know
it’s all okay and if it’s not okay, one day it’ll all be okay.
but this i must say:
without doubt, there will be days when our animal systems get the best of us
when words will come like avalanches without poise,
sometimes patience might be slim like models without food
but that won’t be the end—
it’s certain, the hard times will never be the end
not with us, the ones who champion the way of the absurd,
the way of love that presses through the driest droughts and carries on
not like the chemicals that die with the sun each night,
we will be strong, we will say “yes” when every bone aches “no”
and stand up against the battle of every lie, every chasm of concrete ready to destroy,
we will fight with weapons better than guns,
because what we have is worth every reckoning day and it was built to last.
even if you’re the titanic, both my hands are on deck.
We’re sitting at a cheap Mexican place eating cheap Mexican food and there’s bad lighting all around. A football game between lord knows who is playing with the volume set too loud. My roommate sits across from me and toys with small talk for about thirty seconds before asking a difficult question. It’s the question that I’ve been waiting for, but have been hoping would be glossed over. I trip over my words and thoughts and pride. I can’t say everything that I want to say, but I say something. It’s one of those moments where you have to get something out, anything really. Anything except, “I don’t know.” I suppose that’s the problem with being an adult, you have to answer the questions that come your way, even the ones that you’d rather ignore, rather rewind, rather run from.
The truth is, is that the conversation my roommate and I have lends itself to paint me in a light of weakness. It’s a good weakness though, the kind that says “the way up is the way down”. A pale light that shines and says I haven’t got it all together and that I’m mostly fumbling through life giving it the best shot I can. It’s a conversation that proves my nature as a mistake-maker. A conversation where we eventually end up talking about God and how we see the world and other hard things that you talk about over mediocre tacos.
Days later, I roll back the film in this story and land on this reality: when I’m broken and afraid of myself, when I can barely stand up straight and I seem to be venturing down the wrong road, that’s when trust in God seems to matter most. Because regardless of where I fall on the spectrum, saint or atheist, mystic or agnostic, I’m continually trusting in something. I’m trusting in myself or school or that relationship or my government or pop music or the shopping mall; I’m trusting in money or notoriety or philosophy or talent. And so, when I think about life in terms like that I have to brace myself for the hard truth that challenges who and what I spend most of my days trusting in.
I have to be honest about the fact that when life gets hard my faith in God seems to sink under the high tide of each day’s pressure. But as I mature, I have to respond differently. I have to stare down a theology that lacks trust and rests heavy in personal prosperity and trade it for a truer Gospel. All of this beckons me to step into a new way of following Christ; a trust-centric way of living out my days. A way that says, “come disease, come poverty, come broken heart, I’ll still follow Jesus.”
Most of this means trusting that God is walking with me in my most challenging moments, that he is for me and knows only of the good that he has created within me. I’m learning that if our theology isn’t rooted in a deep trust of God, we’re bound to throw up defeated arms at the sight of unforeseen circumstances and unanswered prayers. I’m seasoned in stomping my feet when I don’t get what I’m hoping for, and even worse, I’m well-versed in a faith that is often dependent on my emotions. Trust, at the very core, chooses to believe in the promises of God rather than the escapism of vending machine theology. Trust moves beyond what I feel and forces me to wrestle the lies that tell me I’m no more than a deserted disciple.
Trust, I’m coming to believe, is what will keep us fighting the good fight and pressing into the life intended for us no matter what the days to come look like.
when my heart is cotton web dry and a thousand gallons thirsty
when the devil’s dealing in smash and everything feels forged
i take a telescope to my ears and see the paper universe in my head,
that’s where i’m working on a brilliant display,
made of duck tape dreams and fractured constellations
a parallel intersection of everything confused—
telescope to my ears and i lose ground, the bearings come undone
so even on the brightest day when the sun’s beaming strong
i forget which reality is real, which matter, matters
i spend too much daylight collecting card stock
for the makeshift planets that i’ve yet to construct
i’ve got the real world and then i’ve got the world in my head
so sometimes it feels like there are pirates invading every room of my mind,
and my paper solar system gets divided and every star burns black
when my ship’s been hit and i’m sinking to a plastic moon that’s only in my head
i pull myself above water and reach for the elements of gravity still fighting to catch me-
the threads that hang on and pull me through my deepest dives
threads of truth and love and everything right
those are things that call me back and itch the throat of my own make-believe world
they come carrying bags of hope on their backs,
they come even when i’m petrified to the center of my bones
even when i’m impatient like weeds creeping through the concrete
the threads of life, the ones outside my cardboard universe,
outside my fabricated actuality
they’re stronger than a million avalanches falling
stronger than all the civil wars,
and those, those are threads that keep me alive.
artwork: thesnailandthecyclops
the cynic:
ten thousand raging bulls reside in this coffin chest
inside there is a dying death to hope for better days
and from my megaphone comes a sweet shamed chorus
a heavy grain of triumphant accusation says, “you can’t do this.”
so i’m sitting at the table, creating behind the sewing machine of disaster
and i see the world all wrong;
all black, all white, all beyond the repairer’s repair
and so, that’s how i see my church, my city, my unfinished dreams—
all beyond the repairer’s repair.
the prophet:
i want to see life through the trees of tomorrow
not through the windows of what once was,
that fog and cloud and barely tell the better story
i want to see it as it is, even if we aren’t making much movement.
don’t give me the inventions of the heart, the sadness of impossibility
don’t deny the texture, the chaos, all the beaming beauty
this is what i want:
a world unbroken where the margin of hurt starts to shrink small
and so i’m flying to an island i’ve never been to—
there’s going to be a funeral for all my blind, selfish living
my ego is going to trip so i can make a life that matters
i’ll get at a better way of living, even if at a sloth’s pace
i keep wondering what kind of scenery i’ll have to walk through
for the truth to jar me out of such despondent disposition,
because when we talk about the geography of poverty
i shut the door and reduce it to a setting too far from my bed
i’m complacent and my eyes are fixed on the mess of material that retires in fields of decay.
and no matter how many times i see the portrait of sadness
and human rights melt like plastic over fire,
i tilt my head to the left and trade reality for candyland visions
of shopping malls and fancy dinners
of button-up shirts and nothingness television.
and i keep sitting in the chairs of comfort holding the bars of how i prefer to live—
in the lap of luxury, the throws of cashmere days,
high on the anarchy of my very own heart.
and so i keep wondering what it will take for clarity to come my way,
for it to come over me in the fast moving tidal wave of compassion.
so i can stop collecting all these fictional identities, so i can start knowing what i know.
because i’ve already flown over the ocean,
i’ve already seen the bottom billion— touched them with my fingers.
i’m suffering in my own way, in my temperature controlled self-entitlement,
with my frozen face of half-conversion, stuck in upper class conclusions of what’s okay.
but there are things that i resolve,
in my heart, in my wallet, in the sword that i will not carry.
oh god, give me an elevation change when it comes to want and need
and all the things that fall in between
because i’m living on the edge of how i want to live-
how i want to give a damn about light shining through the dark
and so i resolve for a better tomorrow to step into the room,
to shake underneath my feet and cloud the temptation of excess
i’m jabbing for better understanding of
what’s mine is yours in a market where all we do is borrow
artwork: jelle martens
i’m trying to dance with the angels but my feet are so
messy and tired and loud with excuses,
and my arms, the ones that are weak and not so coordinated,
they can’t reach to heaven even though i ask them to.
i’d like to quit all the nonsense that floods my heavy head,
so i can focus on what it means to be human.
and inch towards the better lived life,
and walk closer to the better loving God.
but anchors cut into my heart and take me down through the galaxy of sea,
to the place where there is no light,
no story of slippery creature beneath my feet.
so that’s where i spend most of my days:
in the trenches of the unknown,
in the weight of impending worth,
in the story of who i haven’t yet been.
but when the cotton comes undone;
the cotton between my ears,
the lying, stifling cotton
when it gets pulled out and washed away with the tide of all my former failure
that’s when i can finally stand up straight
and come through the gallons of lies that have been charging my way
that’s when i can see who i am:
an explosion of handcrafted genius that’s been in the works since before time began,
and i’ve got so much cause, so much evidentiary reason,
an abstract story in a pragmatic world,
a perfect equation to all this impossible chaos.
so i have to kick my legs strong and claw to the soon coming surface
because the fight isn’t too hard when i hear who i’m supposed to be-
when i remember that every ounce of tomorrow is for me, for all of us
and when our broken records keep hitting the wrong notes
we must get out of the water and push the tide back to where it belongs,
so our eyes can be set free and our legs ready to sway with the angels.
artwork: frederik akum
