My Faith Journey

Currently I am taking an undergraduate class on Christian Faith. As it is a required course at my institution,  I was skeptical at best... I expected the class to be nothing more than a lengthy, boring lecture period filled with note-taking and dreary assigned readings. While theology can be interesting and, at times, fascinating, I was not looking forward to sitting through hell to learn about heaven.

But thus far, I am happily wrong. It’s been anything but academic hell; so far, through the first periods of lecture, it has been an intuitive learning experience – replete with honest peer discussions from the students, as well as insights and thoughts to ponder from the professor.
 
This blog is named Journeys. I chose the name because I feel that life is the “ultimate” journey... one made up of many facets, such as faith, relationships, personal development, and struggles. Ever since starting this blog, I’ve noticed more when the word “journey” is used. So when I read the syllabus and saw that our professor had named our first written assignment of the semester “My Faith Journey” – an essay we would write to discuss our own personal spiritual progress – I was excited. Upon writing it, I thought it fitting to share it here.
 
So, join me as I present to you my faith journey, which continues to grow with every new day.

My Faith Journey

Though I have experienced highs and lows in my faith walk, I can’t remember a time when I was without faith. There have been difficulties and hardships, of course; but I have always known I had a purpose, and that there was a God who cared about what happened to me. To me, faith is the cornerstone of life. Without faith, I can do nothing. I feel that it is what one puts their faith in that matters. My faith has always been growing, though at times it has faltered. But ultimately, my faith in Jesus Christ is at the core of “me”, and I cannot imagine life without it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had some form of faith in my life. As a very young boy, I can clearly remember being three years old with my parents at my bedside, and making the decision to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Soon after, I recall attending “Story Hour”; a mid-week preschool learning time provided by a local Christian Reformed church. I remember hearing Bible stories and singing songs about what we heard. I learned that Jesus wanted us all to be “fishers of men” as we followed His teaching. My family always pursued God and His will for our lives; we read and studied the Bible, prayed daily, and lived godly lifestyles. So even at a young age, my faith was beginning to bloom.

From there, my faith continued to develop. At age five, I moved with my family to a local Baptist church, where I spent probably five years or so. Through church, Sunday School, junior church, and youth group, my faith grew stronger. I understood salvation fully, and I knew I was a “Christian”, but I was still definitely developing as a believer, much less as an individual.
 
As my family’s faith grew together, we wanted more of God, and we felt that the Baptist church we had called home for years did not share our passion or hunger for God. Though they were definitely our church family for a season, it seemed like they were simply comfortable with Christianity as a Sunday church routine. But we wanted “Sunday” to be a lifestyle, and not just a charade. So we moved to a Pentecostal church; there, we felt much more passionate about living our purpose as children of God, and not just existing in it. However, after about a year or two there, we grew dissatisfied with the church’s leadership. Elements of favoritism, pride, and “cliques” were prominent, and grew more obvious as time passed. We decided to move on, looking for another church.
 
As I entered adolescence, it was around this time that I feel my desire for God honestly began to develop; no longer was I just learning about Him, but I really wanted to seek Him and know Him. We switched churches again; this time, we found an Assemblies of God church. While I loved it there, and felt my faith beginning to grow, my parents weren’t sure if it was the best place for us. We moved to a new town a year later, and switched churches again.
 
Then came hardship. Throughout the years, my family has yearned to find a church to call home, but we have had a difficult time. It wouldn’t seem so hard to find a church, but finding a church family who shares your desire for growth is another story. Even to this day, I have a very hard time trusting churches, and I feel this inevitably affects my faith. I understand that we (the body of Christ) are the Church; Jesus has expressed multiple times through the writings of Paul and others that we are to build each other up and love each other as brothers and sisters in Him. However, through my experience, while churches may seem friendly, there always seem to be motives that would say otherwise. There are many factors to churches, such as how its members treat each other, how the leadership works, and how money is handled (to name a few). Things like how Communion is performed matter to me; some churches I’ve been to take Communion in a haphazard, “lax” way that lent no solemness to the rite. Though we would find churches we liked initially, there was always something that would drive us away – anything from pastors’ families acting high and mighty to odd worship practices. Some churches felt like cults; others were complacent and pursued nothing. Passion for God was scarce, and my family and I were judged by many for ours. Most of my teen years were spent between churches, and I never found a church to call home for long.
 
College has presented its own set of challenges to my faith. It was upon entering college that I started really thinking for myself, making educated decisions, and “doing research” before believing anything. Discussions of faith have abounded, as I attend a Christian university full of people like myself. Through my undergraduate years, I feel I have developed not only as an individual, but also as a believer. Concepts like alcohol, homosexuality, and popular forms of entertainment have also added to my constant quest for truth; as the Bible has many things to say about these things, many arguments can be made in how they are perceived and applied in today’s culture. And as time progresses, I’m hearing more and more dissension in the ranks of the Church.
 
But through it all, my faith remains. It is stronger every day, and I want nothing more than to pursue the Lord, discovering how I should live, and how I can be a light in a world that is desperately and hauntingly dark. The journey continues still; and with each step, I am even more excited for the next.

Questions About Fruit

It's been aeons since my last post. A lot has happened since then -- I've returned to the Midwest, and am pursuing the truth about things. My mind is amiss with thoughts and feelings regarding my faith, and the more I talk with my peers about it, the more I realize that I am far from alone in my struggles.

This will by my most controversial post so far, so be warned.

Before I say anything, I want to set the tone for this article. I'm reminded of a passage which I feel is one of the best "advice Scriptures" in the Bible outside of Proverbs. Jesus was speaking with his disciples.

Matthew 7:15-20 (NLT)

Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

Fruit. Keep it in mind.

I think about a lot of things. Lately, my mind has taken a turn towards the spiritual side of life (I refuse to use the word "religion".) Most of my friends are Christian or have a Christian background; though I also have friends who are atheist, pagan, wiccan, and humanist for their respective reasons. It is not my place to judge how others exercise their faith; that is up to them. However, I personally have been questioning my own faith -- not necessarily in a bad sense of the expression; but rather, I'm questioning why I believe what I believe, and if what I believe is actually real or simply fantastic ideas painted to me in pretty traditional Christian pictures. One of my issues is this: based on the Scripture we just read, where is the fruit of our Christianity?

Read the following real statements from some of my peers.

"I've changed my beliefs to humanism. It's been a process over the last few years, but I've done a lot of searching and don't believe the Bible anymore. My mother keeps saying I just find stuff to prove her wrong, or to tell her that she's uninformed about something. It's not that at all. I started searching, and I want to believe. But the more I've looked, the more I've found that it's all wrong. I'm not atheist, but I feel very close to it. Like, I still feel that God is there but everything I'm finding is saying otherwise, or that it's just a construct in our minds. idk..."

"It seems that everything I was told to never do as a child is coming into question now. Or maybe it's just that because I'm older and understand things differently, I'm actually thinking about them. Sometimes I feel like people would categorize me as 'agnostic' rather than 'Christian'. I may not act like a 'Christian' or go to church all the time... I even have trouble reading the Bible. But I know that somewhere deep in me, I believe in and love Jesus... even if I may never feel him like others."
 
 "How can a God of love condemn people that really have no chance to accept him due to circumstance? Do you think our accepting Christ is circumstantial? Do you really believe He is pursuing us? What if we just fail at witnessing and end up turning people away from faith? I'm never going to be good enough to explain faith... I can barely hold onto it myself. I am not a joyful Christian that knows God is real. I do know He isn't going to force anything on anyone. But how can people choose when He doesn't give them the choice? If they don't even know He exists, are they supposed to just know because of nature? Or because someone tells him that a guy died on a cross because He loves them? And what about people with serious mental disorders? What does God do in the event that you are sitting on an existential nihilist's couch balling your eyes out because you don't know what to believe anymore? And you try to explain this to him but since everything is in such spiritual language, you don't know how to put it into plain English? Is God's grace not enough for translation errors? Can Christ reside in me even if I feel confused sometimes?"

I just sense an overwhelming tone of mistrust and questioning in all of these statements, and in my own feelings. Yes, we may still love Jesus; and no, we're not necessarily writing him off as a fairy tale. So why the sudden need for verification of our faith in a deity we've known all our lives? Simple.

We have been told something, but now question its veracity.

Many of us (myself included) grew up in a Christian home. Our parents taught us a certain brand of Christianity (whatever they believed), and we were raised to think a certain way along whatever lines of tradition entailed. Now that we have grown up, we might actually start questioning what has been literally installed in our minds all our lives, such as whether or not alcohol is evil as we were told, or why we can't do certain things. I don't feel that questioning facets of our Christianity is unhealthy, but it may be unsettling at times.

We feel a need to prove our faith because of questions in our own minds.

In the case of my friend crying because she didn't know what to believe, she was in the presence of an educated individual who could not be convinced that the Bible was true. When she found it difficult to explain her faith, she was forced to question what she believed as the other person raised issues she had no answers for. When this happens, how are we supposed to respond? I feel that personally, we need to come to terms with our faith and define our beliefs by the Word of God, but this is no easy task.

We believe and obey the Bible, but don't feel like it's making a difference.

So what do you do when you have read the Bible and are applying it to your life, but it eventually feels more like a charade than a relationship with God? One of my friends has expressed to me that she feels like God never speaks back to her when she seeks Him, and I can definitely relate with that feeling in my own life. This will certainly raise questions and turmoil. Faith becomes an issue, because no relationship will work well if it is one-sided.

We don't see fruit.

This is probably the ultimate reason why we may question our faith. We do everything right, we play church, we read the Bible every day, we pray, and we witness. But we don't see any results. Granted, this isn't always the case; but to me, I feel that our experiences happen like this more times than not. And it's nothing short of discouraging.


Here is how I currently feel. I was raised in a Christian home to believe in God, and that God sent his Son to die for my redemption from sin. I cannot prove this; rather, it is a matter of faith. I do not doubt the existence of God; however, I do challenge the view taught and "imposed" on me by my parents. They told me that alcohol was bad, gays are going to hell, premarital sex is one of the ultimate sins, and that any form of the the theory of evolution is heresy. And I believed them. I've seen my parents literally give their lives for their faith. I have watched them struggle through many things, calling on God to carry them through as they live each step of their lives for Him. Their faith is real. I was with them in this lifestyle for years. We prayed. We worshiped. We interceded. We warred against Satan and the powers of darkness. Sometimes, things got better. But as we did these things, I personally saw no real confirmations from God... nothing to really solidify that what we were believing for was actually working. No fruit. Half of the problems ended up fixing themselves over time, and my family would rave about how "God answered our prayers!" But I felt like I was the only logical mind present who actually figured out that things had naturally changed; there was nothing supernatural going on. These things would happen, and I would think, "Of course it fixed itself. God had nothing to do with it. Of course my cut is better; God created my body to heal itself. God didn't just 'insta-heal' it over three days." You may be thinking at this point, "What a doubter." Granted, this is indeed doubt; but keep in mind, all of these things I am telling you had been happening over a period of ten years. That's a long time. All that time, and nothing really substantial to show for it in terms of fruit. "Oh, but that's what faith is for. Read Hebrews 11:1. This is the part that we have to believe the hardest. Our breakthrough is just around the corner!" Years later, we were still "at that point" with hardly any fruit to show for it.

I love the Lord, and ultimately I live along His guidelines as portrayed in the Bible. But as for the hardcore "Ermergherd, FAITH!!!" lifestyle, I'm more disheartened than anything. I feel like sometimes my family members are "faithing" and "Bibling" themselves to death. We've been rejected by churches for how we believe. For encouragement, we would listen to faith teachers who promised and reassured us with smiles on their faces that "this stuff works." While I don't doubt that faith is necessary for every Christian, I can't help but feel literally smothered by the Bible I've been taught, and I feel bad for wanting to run from it. I'm tired of it being shoved down my throat, and I'm sick of the judgments leveled against me by self-righteous bigots who call themselves Christians, yet act anything like Christ. I'm discouraged by the lack of fruit in the church today. And while I realize that there are many wonderful things being done for Christ, I can't help but think that there are more people than just me who feel the way I do. "Why do I believe? Is it really worth it?"

My views on several facets of life have changed since I was a little kid. These things happen when one grows up; their mind begins to work for itself and that individual can discern what is truth from what is false. This is called maturity, or sophistication. I know that alcohol isn't evil, and I know that homosexuality isn't (as I was taught) a one-way ticket to hell. But if I was to say these things to my parents, you can bet that they would immediately defend their beliefs and write me off as a prodigal. (Slight exaggeration, perhaps. Still, you get the point.)

It's intimidating and a bit unnerving to take a stand, especially when you disagree with tradition regarding faith. This post has been a bit of an outlet for many feelings, but also the beginning of a discussion I genuinely care about. I am daring us (me and you) to at least think about things before we defend or denounce them, and I encourage you to research what and why you believe what you do. I know I'll be doing my homework in the coming weeks... more thoughts to follow. Feel free to comment.


**deuces**

- Knolster