Belief.

This is sort of hard to do, but right now I feel like being really honest.  And the reason I probably feel like being so honest is because it's cold and dark outside, I am almost dead tired, and I just finished a warm, milky cup of tea.  The past several days, all I can think about seems to be Christ and what I truly think of him, and I've begun to really find out more about myself in the process.  Even when I am at work or am brushing my teeth, I seem to be creating a list of questions for God.  This is going to be pretty honest, so bear with me.

Ever since we were kids, most of us knew about this guy named Jesus.  He was the answer to every answer in Sunday School and he kept better track of your naughtiness than Santa Claus did.  Jesus also became sort of a guilt trip too, because every time we were about to do something we thought was fun, someone said Jesus wouldn't like that, and of course we wouldn't want Jesus to be mad.  We never really saw Jesus; he was supposed to be someone on earth two thousand years ago that we can still pray to in our heads.  There has always been something about the idea of Jesus Christ that has kept me curious.  Most Christians say they are different because they believe in Christ, but I wonder what that means.  What does it mean to believe in anyone?  Whenever I hear the word, "belief" I think of the scene in The Polar Express where the young boy keeps saying, "I believe...I believe...I believe..." like he is trying to convince himself that he actually does.  Is my belief like that?

This will sound like heresy to some of you, but it took me awhile to accept Jesus wasn't white.  Jesus wasn't middle class.  Jesus didn't have a nice private school education.  And contrary to what the Baptist church taught you as a kid, he probably had long hair, not a crew cut.

It's funny how the only right picture of Jesus is the one with which you happen to grow up.  We want a Jesus that is like us.

A more accurate picture of Jesus is a man who had dark skin, born from an unwed teenage mother, lived below the middle class, and made a living laying down floors.  It has amazed me that is the way God chose to show himself to the world.

Sometimes I wonder if I really knew Christ face to face two thousand years ago if I really would have accepted him.  The only thing I can say is that I would like to think I would have.

The more I live in America, and in this generation, the more I'm afraid of missing the point of Jesus.  While I accept the imago deo concept of being made in God's image, sometimes I think we make God into our image. We want a God that is like us, and a faith that molds to us.  And in some sense, we want God the same reason we want the latest iPad.


A movie I enjoyed was Castaway staring Tom Hanks.  For those of you who haven't already seen the movie, I will give a quick reader's digest.  The plot revolves around a man being stranded on an island and finds a volleyball he names "Wilson". While trying to survive, the man becomes psychologically dependent on "Wilson" by treating him as a human person.  "Wilson" gives the man all the psychological comfort he needs in order to function.  The humor of the movie comes from all the things Tom Hanks' character is willing to do to preserve Wilson because by preserving the volleyball, he preserves his own psyche.

That movie has stuck with me for a long time.  The reason it has stuck with me so long is because I feel like there is something in myself that can relate to the main character.  The film gives me only one thought.  Perhaps we have invented our own little world to fit our own psychological needs.

Maybe our version of Jesus is our Wilson.

The only question that has come to mind the past few days has been - do I truly understand Christ the way he is meant to be known, or have I created a caricature of him to satisfy myself?


Scripture says that God doesn't have a body, that he is Spirit, and yet our bodies are created in his image.  The Bible also always refers to God as He even though he isn't really male in the normal sense.  God is called Father, because He was the Being who created all of the human race and nurtures it.  Sometimes I wonder how I will know God in heaven if I can't see him.  Does God read all the prayers I pray in my head or does he hear them?

I really just we would stop painting Jesus as something he isn't so I can finally have time to sort all of these questions out and not be afraid to be honest with what I find.


In your college philosophy classes, the word "God" gets thrown around a lot.  The philosophy department seems to talk about God like he is essentially an idea, or an answer to satisfy an equation.  All the "unChristian" philosophers talked about God on a regular basis: Nietzsche, Hume, Freud, Derrida, Foucault, Hegal, Kant.  They all talked about God, some with terror, some with cynicism.  No matter how civilized we become, we cannot get God out of our minds.  We are obsessed with the idea of God.  And I think the debate over his exists is not as controversial as the debate over his nature.  When we say the word, "God", we want to know what it really means.

If you have never read The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, I'd recommend it.  It's one of those books you snuggle up with in bed in the morning and you don't care what time it is.  In her book, Norris writes about the Benedictine monks and how they would stay up late into the night and read Scripture aloud by candlelight.  It makes me wonder what it would be like to read Scripture like that, and it gives me chills.  Kathleen wrote her own observations this way:

"Although their access to scholarly tools was primitive compared to what is available in our day, their method of biblical interpretation was in some ways more sophisticated and certainly more psychologically astute, in that they were better able to fathom the complex integrative, and transformative qualities of revelation.  Their approach was far less narcissistic than our own tends to be, in that their goal when reading scripture was to see Christ in every verse, and not a mirror image of themselves."

My heart almost stops every time I read that passage, because I know it's true.  I read Scripture like a narcissist trying to find myself and self-application in every verse.  If I sat down and put aside all the silly Christian books that were discounted at the local bookstore, I put aside a lot of my culture presuppositions about Jesus, I put aside my desire to find a formula and chart to grow my faith and just read with honesty and sincerity, that would be a true gift.  In order to do that, I would have to put aside my fear of discovering God as he is.

The older I get the more I learn that faith isn't really about having all the right answers as much as it is willingness to search for them.  Perhaps that is what Christ meant when he said to come to him you had to come as a child.  Children are searchers, and they are vulnerable and in need of a lot of guidance.  I trust solely in Christ; and the trust that has given me salvation is the same trust that makes me more curious about the one whom I've claimed to believe.