A Way In Or A Way Out

I turned up a little before 11:00 Thursday morning at Rev. Linda's office. It was the same as I had remembered it, a line of bookshelves down one side of the office and an awkwardly placed loveseat perpendicular to her desk and a cushioned chair on the other side. At first I couldn't figure out where to sit, the sofa was set low, so that my head just rose above the surface of the desk. Owning to my general discomfort, I sat at the farthest corner of the sofa where I could have the best vantage point of her position for I incorrectly assumed that she would remain behind her desk during our conversation, it was one of many wrong assumptions I would make about our meeting.

As soon as she was finished with the email she was writing, she came out from behind her desk and sat at the cushioned chair beside the couch nearest to the end where I was seated. I promptly but nonchalantly moved to the opposite end to give myself more breathing room. As she was arranging herself in the chair, she asked me if I still felt the meaninglessness that I had described to her the Sunday of my visit. I tried to answer but did not feel comfortable confirming or denying the statement that I had made. I wasn't that she made me uncomfortable, quite the contrary, her disarming style, a cross between an aunt and a hippie, made it easy to express my feelings. But in this instance, I truly did not know. That is why I proceeded to expound on the uncertainty of my feelings. And she listened, patiently and intently, only responding when I had spent what was off the top of my head on the subject.

What I told her, in short, was that I was unsure about what I wanted to do about the faith. I longed for it, yes, but did I truly love it or was I just lusting after its rites and rituals. Was it the case that when I saw Frank ministering I was jealous because I knew it is what I should be doing or was I just exhibiting the lingering emotions sparked in a man who sees another man's arms around an ex-lover? I sat back in my chair, pleased with the sound of my own eloquence. I anticipated a gasp at the profundity of my self-reflections, but instead Rev. Linda seemed more intrigued by the enduring belief I had in my own freedom. She had only to say a couple of words to remind that her response emanated from her reformed traditional and for those of us brought up in the Arminianist camp this could be summed up in one word—predestination.

But true to her disarming style, she did not present it to me in the way so many of her Baptist brethren had done when I would clash with them over the issue as we were both trying, unsuccessfully, to win innocent bystanders to Christ. Her interpretation of it was more in line with Christian Existentialism with its leap of faith into the absurd. I had never thought of Calvinism in such a way. To clarify her position further, she quoted the first question from the Heidelberg Catechism, which I had passed over only a day before, "what is our only comfort in life and death?" That I am not my own." Yes, this is a clear affirmation of Calvinistic doctrine, but it is also a respite for those, like me, who are being crushed under the weight of there own freedom.

Her words caught me unawares, the thought of finding my own way back without the constraints and judgments of past peers was tantalizing but I fought the temptation to embrace them, reminding her that even the simple declaration she had given me as a test of membership, "I believe in Jesus as my lord and saviors," had deep and intertwining roots in systemic theology and in my mind Truth, with a capital T, does not coexist with ambiguity. For her, Truth can be thought of as the light at the end of a very long tunnel rather than a fire one is able to contain in one's hand and hold out to others. She challenged my belief that I had to or could even hope to figure it all out. For her, proselytizing meant helping those one might find naked, depressed, imprisoned and hungry toward that light. But the old hermeneutic dies hard, the voice of the Evangelical hollered back to me saying, "true, true, you won't be able to figure it out in your present state, you must be dead to the world and alive in Christ before you can see such a glorious Truth, but it is possible." I live in two worlds, I believe like the one and think like the other and the result is that I belong to neither.

This is the epiphany that came to me during our conversation. I have not been able to escape the faith, I may not be part of it salvifically, but it still defines me. Spong remarked that "Christianity must change or die," but it has always been my fervent belief that Christianity could do no such thing and therefore must die, or more accurately, I must die to it. I could not hope to change it and I could not change the perspective I had gained, so I left it. Now, Rev. Linda presented a compelling argument to the contrary in a way that challenging but not meant as a challenge. She understood all to well my struggle but she also discerned that I was a "pull yourself up by the bootstraps kind of guy," as she said.

And it's true; I want it to be hard. I want to suffer and struggle and present my life, wholly committed to and convinced of the Gospel, as an offering to Christ and I can't do that now. In this, Jeremy would applaud Rev. Linda's challenge to me. For he had remarked only weeks before, that he would not what me to return to the way I was in the faith; I can now see why he said that although at the time it seemed strange. But he knows that it is an all-consuming passion for me that burns out everything instead of warming those around it with a gentle glow. It is becoming clearer now, I feel the burden lessening, slightly, but at the same time, as I look up from this deep swell, I see a tremendous wave, a wall of churning water, forming before me, baring down on me with unimaginable force and I am being sucked towards its wake and I cannot see what is behind it but it appears insurmountable.