I’ve been drowning on the inside.
Now I’m coming up for air,
grasping at whatever is near
to keep
from going
under
again.
For four years, I’ve felt more and more rejected by those who are supposed to be most loving and accepting, and that feeling of rejection has slipped into other parts of my life. Did God reject me? Am I wrong to ask questions? Why do I have questions? Can I believe and still have the questions I have?
Don’t call me a Christian. It’s not that I don’t believe… sort of. But I’m having trouble with belief, with faith, in a world that is so black and white. But isn’t Christianity about black and white, good and evil, easily distinguishable from each other and with a clear good and bad? Maybe for some, but not for me. Not for someone who sees in grays. The absolutes? God is good. God is love. Jesus is my savior. Beyond that… a sea of grays, difficult to navigate in a polarized society, in a black and white church.
Ah, to fellowship. To be able to talk to others, to ask questions, to discuss the Bible at length without being expected to come to any conclusion, but simply enjoying the many aspects of a multi-faceted, infinite Creator God, challenging, tasting, accepting, being accepted.
And I am drowning. Lost in a sea of questions, and pulling anyone who comes close under with me in my panic for a breath of air. Hungry for understanding, confused by the polarities, and frustrated by so many who see mono-chromatically, one dimensionally a world and a God full of infinite possibilities.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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