The Deeper Side of Darkness

I have become aware of an unsettling fact, it may be pride that is keeping me from the faith and not any theological or philosophical issue after all. I told Frank the other night that I could not conceive of professing faith again but that was simply the recognition of an outward reality. I had to go deeper. Just as I had begun my lonely journey out of the faith with the question of what would falsify my belief in God; now, as I stand at the entrance, I must ask myself what would falsify my refusal to believe again.

The roots of my refusal are deep and twisted like those of an ancient redwood. Some are easy to discern for they lie just above the ground but others stretch far below the surface lost amid layers of earth and it is these roots that anchor me to my position. On the surface, it is all about hypocrisy and theology. I can't return because I would encounter the same people that made me loathe every moment I spent in chapel, their radiant faces only a facade to a spiritual life spent in mediocrity. And even if I could slip past these to the throne of grace, there I would find that very same questions that drove me from this holy place still exist, unresolved. But neither of these reasons are significant enough to keep me from a truer meaning if I know it really existed for me, for real meaning is not compromised by mere facades and paradoxes.

When I have pulled up the bare barky sinews of my refusal, decayed by constant reiteration to family and friends, I find that it is not others that have kept me from the faith but it is my own relentless, paralyzing pride that has buried me so deep. The roots of my dissent are smeared with the dirt of my own unwillingness to submit. The truth is that I am able to image befriending and even being one of those hypocrites again; I can even envision being content within the mystery of an eternal God made flesh in order bring redemption to an undeserving world, but I refuse to say the words that would gain me entrance. 'Oh wretched man that I am, who will save me from the body of this death.'

I feel as if I writing the obituary to my old life in these posts while still living it. But I would rather endure a rigorous regime of hourly self analysis than go under the knife of conviction. I want to remain in control and I know that such a desire will lead me nowhere but as much as I despise baring the burden of this responsibility, I have carried it too long to set it aside. And then again this could all be an unwanted buzz from an intoxicating idea that inspires me to soar toward the infinite when all I can really do is stumble into a deeper darkness.