Hello? Are you there?

It’s not unusual for Christians to struggle with the idea of whether or not God is listening to them. Especially when our lives become overwhelmed and bogged down with the day to day stresses of life. But for many, it wasn’t always that way. For instance, shortly after I converted, like many converts, I was overwhelmed with a sense of joy and passion and nothing could break my spirit or devotion. I read theology, the bible, prayed, celebrated mass every Sunday and even some daily masses. The faith machine was powered up and everything was going along smoothly until my maintenance schedule had to be adjusted and it eventually broke down. The Cogs wore out, the belts snapped, the coal wasn’t being replenished and the roaring fire dwindled to ash.  It looked like I had left the Three Stooges in charge of my faith maintenance.

Imagine now, being married(if you aren’t already) and trying to incorporate time together and maintain your individual maintenance schedules. Now add children to the equation.   Sounds doable and it can be done but wait, there’s more, the children want to do ballet and play sports.  Now, we have a more complicated schedule, etc, etc. I think this is a common problem in many families and individuals. When my schedule began to shift due to the demands of life my fire began to die and piece by piece my machine broke apart and rusted away.

This is not meant to be an attack on routines and set times for coming to God but sometimes these routines aren’t very flexible. Parts in machines aren’t meant to be bent and stretched and pulled out during operation. I think the problem develops when we limit our encounters with God to these set times. We give our faith a mechanical property that isn’t naturally there.

In college I asked my poetry professor for advice on writing poetry and he told me:”Many people, when walking down the sidewalk, see a bush and continue walking. But the poet, sees not just a bush, but the branches, the roots, the leaves, the broken twigs, the bark and the bugs.”  So, in an attempt to incorporate a more poetic look at our faith, I will use the analogy of our faith as water. More specifically, living water as the gospel of John says(4:10) “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” and John(4:14) “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

If you were to drop a cog, of decent size, flat on your kitchen table, it would make a loud bang and lay still. But what would happen if you were to drop a bowl of water on your kitchen table? More than likely the bowl breaks and the water flows freely over the table in all directions, covering everything.  Water has many uses but primarily it provides and maintains life. In Africa, the yearly rains help revive a barren desert, herds of animals flock to the abundance of watering holes and vegetation.

Let us substitute the idea of our faith being a broken down machine and replace it with a barren desert. But now this barren desert has a spring of living water. 

Have you ever stopped to watch how water flows and curves over land, tumbles over and squirms under barriers and sifts through sand? Unless we create a dam or something to house water, it will continue to flow and attract life to it. If the spring of Christ is flowing through us what are some barriers we create in ourselves?

We should ask ourselves, “what is preventing me from seeing God in everything and everyone around?” If we let Christ flow from us like water we create an opportunity to see him in others and in the Earth we inhabit. Our barren desert will flourish and transform into a garden.

When water stops flowing it can collect and form a pool known as standing water. Standing water often becomes a breeding ground for mosquitos, malaria and other bacteria. When we decide to keep the spring to ourselves and solely focus on our own good and hoard God for ourselves. We become sick with self-righteousness, anger and judgmental tendencies(to name a few) which can harden our hearts and transform our flowing spring into a festering bog.

Like any garden though, it will require weeding, pruning, watering, sowing seeds and sun. You will sweat, bugs will bite, animals will try to eat your plants and you will probably feel like giving up. But in the end, the fruits of our labor will yield a beautiful garden and as it grows, just maybe, it will help transform some wastelands around you.

 

 

 

 

Balancing Heart And Mind

In the five and a half months I have spent returning to my faith, The Catholic Church, I’ve spent my time: reading scripture, apologetics, theology, watching videos, listening to Catholic radio, discussing with friends, prayer, writing in journals/ this blog and even sharing my faith with others. What I have observed in myself is a tendency to favor the Mind over the Heart in spiritual matters and it makes me wonder if anyone else is conflicted with this issue as well.

I think it would be proper to state my case with organizing Christians into two groups, those who seek and know God with their Mind(Intellectual) and those who seek and know God within their Heart(Emotional).

I have always had an intellectual attraction to God. I think it’s partially due to my upbringing, but I also think it is part of my natural desire to learn and to know things. I was raised to ask questions and to seek answers to the world around me. This type of pursuit of God makes it easy to digest theology and apologetics. Allowing me to engage in discussion or even debate on faith based topics. Knowledge feeds into our competitive nature and ego’s desire to be “right” and “win.” An intellectual understanding of God can help equip us for evangelism, instructing and raising children,  and continuing our growth and understanding of God.

As wonderful as that all is, it does have its downfall. It can lead to arrogance and a sense of being “better” or “closer” to God because of our knowledge of God. We can to easily elevate ourselves above others because  of our knowledge and we must be careful of this. Christians need to maintain a self awareness of the other part of God, our heart.

I have come to understand the heart in relation to God as being connected to an emotional connection to God or a more natural ability to “feel” God as some would say. I think Prayer is a good example of this. I have spent so much time pondering God and learning so much that it makes it very easy to not take prayer so seriously. I don’t mean that I don’t think it works, rather, I find myself having trouble believing that God is listening to me because there isn’t a verbal dialogue happening. It’s easy to become distracted when praying, falling asleep or shifting our focus onto something like work, family, that one thing someone said that made you angry, etc.

The emotional part of our relationship with God is equally important as our intellectual relationship. Its what allows us to trust him, to take that “leap of faith” so to say. Paul Tillich says in his book, Dynamics of Faith that faith is our “Ultimate Concern.” Whatever our faith is, it should be our ultimate concern. We have to trust God. We often do not trust someone before we know them. For instance, if someone came up to you on the streets and said trust me with your money and I will go and purchase your groceries for you and bring them home, we would probably run away and bring up that person around the dinner table.  But, what if your friendly neighbor of 15 years made you the same offer. We probably wouldn’t hesitate much at all. Trusting someone is often times applying what we know about that person based off our encounters with them.

If we try to live off of “feeling” God alone, via an emotional bond, then we run the risk of limiting our ability to serve the world as we are instructed to. If we cannot discuss and explain our faith to others then we are neglecting one of our roles as Christians. Emotions change and one thing I have learned, that the closer I come to God, sometimes the further away he seems.

Everyday we have an opportunity to experience God and develop a stronger relationship with Him. Intellectually we can read scripture, theology and contemplate our faith. While emotionally we can grow with God through prayer, music and small groups, just to name a few examples. The idea though, is not to only be intellectual or emotional but to have a healthy amount of both. As we develop and grow we can intertwine the two so that we can nourish all aspects of knowing God.

The past few months have taught me that maintaining our faith, like life, is a balancing act. We need to experience God in our Mind and in our Hearts. It is pertinent that we examine our faith and ask God questions. We have to maintain relationships with each other and have dialogues but also dialogue with God, alone.

Hypocrisy

When I decided to cease all participation at Church, place my Christian faith in a chest, wrapped in chains and padlocks, and let it sink to the abyss of my heart. I tethered a line to that sinking chest and attached to it, golden placards, such as: Hypocrisy, Guilt, Shame, Ignorance and many others. I placed hypocrisy first because it was the easiest one for me to become upset with. I created a safeguard for reverting back to my faith.  Every time I  thought about God or my Faith, I would place my hand upon this guideline and swim down. If I picked up my rosary, eyed my theology books, began to pray, or pondered God in my life, I would  see that golden placard “Hypocrisy” and quickly drop the line and scurry to the top before I drowned.

On the surface, Hypocrisy is a viable excuse and makes sense. However, when I began to think about it, for the sake of the hypocrisy argument and for the sake of not being a hypocrite myself and therefore contradicting my hypocrisy argument, I’d almost have to become a hermit to avoid it. Let me explain: If hypocrisy is an argument for not attending Church because the claims being made by the parishioners are not being met or seen. Then one cannot dwell in politics either. Do politicians not claim to uphold the law, to protect citizens? Yet we hear about corruption in politics, politicians being bought, etc. Are we allowed then to allow hypocrisy in some aspects of life but not others? Absolutely not, that would be hypocritical! What about working for corporations? Banks? Are these entities not bound by professional practices/ laws and moral codes? Yet hypocrisy is there as well. I will even take the extreme route and say that I shouldn’t even drive a car because I agree to follow the laws about speeding, complete stops, always use a turn signal, etc. Yet, I see people break these laws daily, myself included. Living in a rural area would make commuting difficult without a vehicle.

Christians tend to be slapped with the Hypocrisy card quite a bit. Especially on the internet where anyone’s opinion and voice can be broadcasted to everyone via social media and comment sections in news articles. If a Christian does something so extremely contradictory to their faith it makes the news and is circulated and many people will spew their opinions about how untrue and irrelevant Christianity is. Imagine if we used this logic to evaluate the efficacy of things like science and medicine. For instance, if a scientist rigs an experiment for a desired result do we then say all scientist rig experiments and are untrustworthy? No. We call out that scientist and ask for an explanation.  If a doctor tells us to quit smoking or stop eating french fries do we insist that all doctors are wrong about this advice if we see them smoking or eating french fries? Of course not, that would be absurd. I do however, understand the frustration that can develop towards Christianity, we are professing a belief system and lifestyle that is backed up by morals handed down from God.

Hypocrisy can become an easy deterrent  for many people who see Christianity as a refuge from the world. It is advertised as Truth where you are accepted and loved, respected and treated equally as a sinner, and indeed it is but there is more to it then that. I think the disconnect comes when people do not cognitively recognize that we must also make an attempt to discontinue our sinful acts. A community of believers is supposed to be there to support each other in our walk with Christ. Many of my Catholic friends like to go to confession at different churches so their priest doesn’t know their downfalls. But I prefer to talk to my  parish priest face to face, in a way, he is my spiritual therapist and should know these struggles. How else can he help the Church grow and mature if he doesn’t know our struggles?

We live in a society that promotes the individual. “You are special” “You are unique” “You are the only person like you” yet we put people in groups. Whites are…Blacks are…. Men are…Women are… Christians are… Atheists are…etc.  We end up removing the individuality from someone and lumping them into a group as though we are the only individual, which seems a bit hypocritical does it not?

In the end, I think hypocrisy is used as a common generalization for dealing with frustrations with church and believers. We have to be honest with ourselves though and ask “do we truly know the intimate lives of every single person in this church to justify calling them ALL Hypocrites?” Any honest person would probably answer, No. But if that person were to answer Yes. Then are they not being a hypocrite themselves by not reaching out and help correct the problem at hand?