Is it just me? Am I the only one who has noticed a change in the air? This shift in direction … movement of belief … Maybe it is just my thirty-something generation … maybe this is a road that all walk in their Christian faith. Or … maybe it is just the world we live in that is different. Or maybe it’s been around a while in the western part of the country and it’s all just trickling down to me now. The idea that “religion is distracting us from Jesus?”
Maybe. I don’t know … maybe I have been thinking that very question for a while, but have never been able to put it into words. It goes against the very grain … the very foundation of my faith.
I can find hundreds of books to tell me how to be a better Christian. I can watch it on television. I can hear it in Bible study or in a pew on Sunday mornings. There are so many rules. So many ideas. So many interpretations. Pray this way. Give this way. Think this way. Study this way. Discipline. Morals. Black and white … and sometimes gray. People are so convicted in their beliefs … there is no room for unbelief without being an outcast of some sort. And, according to some conservatives, those outcasts are taking over our country.
I’ve read The Shack… where God was Aunt Jemima and the Holy Spirit was a hippie. I’ve read Crazy Love, where I’ve been reminded of how small … and dare I say … insignificant I am. I get it. It’s not all about me. Rick Warren has told me how to find my purpose. Larry Jones asks me to Feed the Children. Joel Osteen tells me how magnificent and powerful I am because of God … that this is, “my time for abundant living and success.”
So. Much. Information.
So many things to put on my to-do list for Jesus.
I think I am on information overload. I think my entire life I have had an either written or mental to-do list … one that is not rational … and one that will never, under no circumstances, draw me any closer to God. Or will it? My lists are all from too much information. Too many words. What if they are all just carefully planned out distractions … to sway us from knowing the real God?
And, though I am a professed lover of words … now more than ever … I believe that words are cheap. They really are. Nothing is sacred anymore. The Internet, AOL, face book, twitter, Fox News and MSNBC are our reality. In your face, demoralizing, desensitizing reality. I believe that our society has strived so hard for fame and individuality … that we have become so over saturated with written and spoken words … so much that it all runs together for me anymore.
And that spills over into my faith. I think I am on a religion overload. Has religion pushed me away? I think I’ve lost myself when all I’ve done is try to find myself. Find who I am in the grand scheme of things. Find my calling. Find my purpose. Find my relationship with Christ. Find who He is. Find a relationship with Him. Find. Him. Lost.
When I was a child I dreamed of being an artist and a writer. I wanted to write books. I wanted to paint. And, I wanted to teach English and art. I was told I could be anything I wanted to be … do anything I wanted to do. I thought I was exceptional because I was told I was. I was taught how to market myself. How to advertise my creativity. How to work hard to earn my success… to set goals. When I became a Christian, I was told to find my purpose … my “calling.” I was given a rule list. And, a rule Book.
