Do I believe in God?
I don't know how to answer that
question anymore.
To say yes, I would allow for the
adequacy of a sentence structure where one minor swap could ask: Do I
believe in Santa Claus?
Is there an ineffable mystery before
which my soul opens outward and says yes? I cannot say no. Every
thing that is in me wants to say yes. Longs to say yes. Does my soul
pant for God as the deer pants for streams of running water? Yes.
Do I accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour?
Again, I stammer and hesitate. In a
bumperstickered world, where language is highjacked, trampled,
photocopied, run off and repeated without end and without meaning,
where we are wedged between the self-certain impositions of
propaganda and the chaotic rantings of the online wall of noise, I
recoil from casting a public ballot that aligns me with a Christian
“us” against a non-Christian “them.”
Does the cross of Christ move me to
tears? Yes. Am I stirred by a gospel that names a God who suffers,
disciples who sleep and betray, and a Risen One who forgives all?
Yes. Is this vision of the Divine - taking our punishment, instead of
meting it out – the one vision I trust, that I cling to for
assurance, for sanity, for truth, for hope, for light against the
falling dark? Yes and yes.
Have I received the Holy Spirit?
Now we are in territory where even my
kinspeople have no words. Mennonites are no holy rollers. But am I
falling in love with the Holy Spirit anyway? Yes. Am I stunned by the
implications made by St. John, pitting the Paraclete, “The Attorney
for the Defense,” against Satan, “The Accuser”? Yes. Do I want
to join in declaring the whole world innocent? In busting the ugliest
criminal out of his prison of shame – the prison within me and the
prison without? Yes! Am I drawn to the beautiful bridge between
transcendance and immanence, between the Father and the Son who goes
- for our sake - as far from the Father as it is possible to go? Am I
enchanted by the Trinity's dance of love, between the Light
Unspeakable and the Word made flesh? Do I strain for the music that
conducts their dance? Does its pulse tug at my own sinews? Yes, yes,
and yes.
I like how you pose your own questions as a way of being true to the mysteries tug at our sinews!
ReplyDeleteTim