Experience Rambling

And with the third week of Advent come the first theological posts, amen.

No worries about your mini-sabbatical from the blogosphere, I am more than happy for your academic achievements, and I applaud you for them, I know I want to continue to learn in an academic environment, I have felt that way since I walked down the aisle at my commencement, but to study what?, and for what purpose?  Those are the questions that have plagued me, so for now I just read a lot.

I have to say it sounds as though our upbringings were somewhat similar, yet different.  The McCormick’s as a clan, are not distinctly religious.  Friendship and family were the prime activities.  Large family gatherings during the year and membership in various fraternal orders were the standard operating practice.  Church was where you went for funerals, weddings, and to impress a date’s parents.

My parents enrolled myself and my brothers in an evangelical private school primarily on the basis of quality of education not religious instruction.  Not that my parents did not believe in God or want us to learn about Him, but that wasn’t the big reason.

Pre-school through high school was experienced between the walls of Desert Christian Schools; a fine school in itself but distinctly evangelical, dispensational, and conservative.  And my church was the Independent Baptist of Lancaster Baptist Church.  Oddly enough despite the education and church life I lived a fairly moderate modern suburban American existence, I listened to pop music, went to movies and had HBO at home.

While I believed I was saved during the 5^th grade God was never intensely personal to me during childhood or adolescence.  School had taught me the basic theological concepts of Christianity and through church I understood the mentality and morality of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists, and I suppose I believed it all but more than likely it beliefs based on training rather than real faith.  Kind of like after you finish your first few days at a new job, and you have learn how to do everything the company way, but you haven’t figured it all out for yourself or recognized some of the really inane or absurd practices that you are just going along with because that is what you have been told to do.  That was me, going with the flow because I didn’t know any better,.

I left a Christian high school for a Christian university.  Biola University is a well-respected center of conservative evangelical thought in evangelical academia.  In both student life and academics it was not as conservative as some or as liberal as others but it felt to me like God really worked there, and I enjoyed the campus and the location.

While there I was exposed to the enormous world of evangelical based academia.  There was so much to learn, to know, to research, and while it wasn’t my primary area of study (Radio/TV/Film, “When a Communications degree seems too useful”), I think I enjoyed my Bible and Christian Thought classes more than anything.  The only problem was that when surrounded by this much “God Talk” and forced study of the Word, I like many others reached a personal spiritual dry spell.  And that along with a few other occurrences actually drew me away from the school and a serious walk with God.

In the following years I was actually truly on my own.  I had an apartment, I paid my bills, I had a real job, I did my own taxes and shopped and paid for my own insurance.  And this new found independence pulled me even farther away from God.  Talking to God, or reading the Bible was something that I only seemed to do when I was feeling guilty or empty.

Amazingly it took marriage and coming home for me to find God again.

Life brought me back to Antelope Valley with a serious girlfriend in tow with whom I had intentions of starting life together with.  But if I was going to do that I wanted a solid foundation; so I found a church, I went back to finish my degree at Biola, and I started to find God again.

So 700 words to get me to this: I was always bothered a little bit by the fact that all of my former churches and schools the company line was that we had all the answers about God.  Every question had been answered; we knew where God stood on all of the issues, no need for discussion.  And even though that is how I had been raised I just never felt copacetic about it, probably the rebellious Irish in me.  But I didn’t believe God meant for life to be that straight forward and black and white.

I know God is infinitely complex, there is just so much that we don’t know about God, questions that we don’t have answers for, so we ignore them or don’t consider them relevant.

His creation is infinitely complex, as much as science understands and explains there is still so much that we have no clue about.  Be it the inner workings of an atom, to why we yawn, to how the heck people built the pyramids and ziggurats.

And humanity’s various understandings of God are just as complex.  I know I don’t understand it hardly at all. 

Why is most of the special revelation I have about God and what He wants me to do over 1900 years old? 

Was the book of Revelation written for the Christians of the 1^st century or the church of the 21^st?

Why does a Church whose principle teacher and savior, Jesus, instructed his followers to clothe and feed the poor, spend millions upon millions of dollars on megachurch campuses?  And yes I have to take a very hard look back at my own past on that one. 

Why does the church instead of loving the outcasts of society, be they gay, lesbian, homeless, drug addicted or sick instead picket and support laws that hurt others and do anything but show love and acceptance.

Suffice to say I don’t know or have answers to any of these questions and that makes experiencing and knowing God harder today than it has been at any other point in my life.  It was much easier when I had a standard line to follow from my school or church.  Now I feel like Karl Barth “Man as man can never know God: His wishing, seeking, and striving are all in vain.”

Despite this I still have an intense desire to know God.  I echo the feelings of Jürgen Moltmann when he said “It is simple, but true, to say that theology has only one, single problem God.  We are theologians for the sake of God. God is our dignity. God is our agony. God is our hope.”  And I know God is personal but I also believe “God is personal, but personal in an incomprehensible way, in so far as the conception of his personality surpasses all our views of personality (Barth).

So in trying to connect on a personal level and experience God I have two particular works that have and are profoundly influencing me;  “The Practice of the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence and “Letters by a Modern Mystic" by Frank Laubach.

To boil it down they both come to the “Pray without ceasing concept” and really put it to work.  Actively make efforts to be in constant conversation with the Lord.  I have been trying this for some time now, and first of it is not easy.  Modern distractions make really hard.  But I know it can be done, and with practice I find that there are small moments of transcendence, where I do experience God in a very real and personal way.  And it is at those times that I think I understand what David was doing in the fields watching sheep, or lying in a tent, or hiding in a cave; and I can understand where all of those Psalms come from.

It is a work in progress, much like I am.  And even though I go through rich and dry spells in my life with God, I know He is there.  In a postmodern culture it is almost too easy to disavow any idea of a supreme being, but I just can’t buy into that.  I refuse to ignore that little bit inside me that draws me to Him, instead I search for Him, try (Often in vain) to understand Him, and let Him use me.

This is a line from another baseball movie and I kind of think it applies to my relationship with God too “I used to believe, I still do, that if you give something your all it doesn't matter if you win or lose, as long as you've risked everything put everything out there.”*

 *I too caught the Field of Dreams reference.  Can you name this one without googling?