The wine & the bread
June 30th, 2008My faith is not firm.
I doubt. I wrestle. I get angry. I don’t understand. I get frustrated.
I yell at God. I curse. I weep. I walk away and stumble back.
Sometimes I think God wants me to put up my fists and challenge him to a fist fight.
Maybe God wants a fight. Wants to wrestle. To be questioned. Maybe God wants people to deeply struggle with the text and with relationship between God and humans.
And for me, there is a holy reverence to challenging God to a fight.
In college I was told You just have to believe, and I don’t buy it, nor did I buy it then. I don’t have to believe. I have the choice, and I don’t think I’d love a God who didn’t allow choice.
I heard a pastor I respect once say that he didn’t know if God found him first or if he’d found God first, meaning that he wondered if he would have possibly followed another religion if he had found it first. But he didn’t; he and God met before that could happen.
I like that story. I like the choice that it portrays.
I can’t say much about the Christian faith, for there are too many things I do not understand. My irreducible truths are few.
But I can say this: Every week I come to the table with my friends at Wits End. We take the wine, take the bread, and eat and drink together to remember the redemption. And every week I sit there with tears in my eyes as I think about the absurdity of the incarnation, the death and the life, and the beauty of the story I find myself in.
I bring to the table the anger, the questions, the fighting, the cursing, the tears. But then I take the wine and the bread, and for a peaceful moment in time God and I weep and feast together.
it is good to feast with you in God each week. your words bring a softness to my heart as a enter this day. thanks.
p
I miss you writing about these kinds of things. Thank you for this today. I needed to read it!
your words spoke to my heart.
struggling is SO important. it was refreshing to see that one is not the only one who doubts. and at the same time being overwhelmed by God’s love.
thank you for posting this, Joshua.
“…there is a holy reverence to challenging God to a fight.”
So true. I’m reminded of Jacob and his wrestling match with God.
I have fought God more in the past year than I have in my life, but I know Him better for it. And given the choice, I choose Him. I have encountered Truth (Jesus) and can’t turn back, no matter how hard I fight to get loose sometimes.
He’s faithful.
I like your posts.
beautiful.
Hey bro, i appreciate your honest and transparency. Blogs create a unique community of people and vulnerability encourages community.
funny. I had this same conversation with my roommate who is not a believer this morning. in the eucharist, there is a beautiful mystery that eliminates divisions and levels the people of God to a profound unity that is in Christ. there is also a beautiful mystery in the experience of wrestling with God and wrestling with the text. this is something of which we have a great deal to learn from our Jewish friends. if you have not already, you should check out The Gospel According to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus by Athol Dickson.
Good stuff.
” I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.” — Galileo Galilei
God found me. I’m glad he did. He showed me things and introduced me to people. And I reminded of Jacob, too.
I am just guessing but I think God loves this honesty. The true, raw emotions, instead of pretending to keep going but having an emptiness inside.
I was in similar shoes once but my walkabout ended up lasting 5 years and I did a lot of silly things in that time. I remember the day when I was sitting in a little chapel on campus during my lunch time and crying my eyes out and asking forgiveness. And you know, I felt God and the one thing that has stuck with me to this day about that moment is that I was forgiven, it was forgotten and there was no condemnation. It was an amazing day.
The things I did I am not proud of but at the end of it all I arrived at a place where I owned my faith and the relationship became real to me.
I am thankful for that.
Awesome post Joshua. You really moved me tonight. Thanks for your raw honesty.
Peace,
E
You haven’t written like this for a while, I love it.
Best post ever?
amen
My cousin and I had a very similar discussion about this the other day. God, in fact, gave us brains with which to think, question, and explore. He didn’t make us robots. Perhaps the greatest gifts He gave us are our brains and our free will…the ability to choose Him or not. I love that. Some “traditionalists” may see our searching generation as rebellious, but really, I feel we’re doing exactly what God created us to do. Did He not specifically instruct us to SEEK Him? Not just follow blindly, but to SEEK Him.
“I doubt. I wrestle. I get angry. I don’t understand. I get frustrated.
I yell at God. I curse. I weep. I walk away and stumble back.”
It’s a real relationship. It wouldn’t be one if everything was peachy all the time. Sometimes I stand in the same emotions that you listed and I get frustrated too. However if we already knew all the mysteries of God, we wouldn’t have a reason to keep seeking him. By the way, I like how even though you’re the picture taker, you still ended up in the picture. That’s skill right there.
thank you…
Dear Josh. I knew you were a fighter. I would love to eat at your table
I honestly think that deep down inside, man was built for struggle, with a desire to fight against something hardwired into him. There’s a part of us that wants conflict, and wants to be tested. If not for that, then why play football or chess?
I can’t agree more. Struggle with God has been the theme of the past week for me. Only by bringing the issues to the table (and by table I mean sitting on a two-foot stone wall and crying with a friend) was I able to feel at peace.