Of God and Fluff

I realized my problem.

Approximately two years ago I begged God to just let me be human.  I'd lived my entire life living, breathing, emanating His every word, every will (okay, a good chunk of it, at least I tried to be obedient....).  At times people said I literally glowed.  I was zealous, adamant, stubborn, passionate.  I didn't just talk Christian, I WAS Christian.

But the thing is, I felt so isolated.  So....weird.  I read the Bible when I was bored, and not the "awwww look at all the sheep cute little David is watching in the barren desert we assume all of the Holy Land is" parts of the Bible.  I read EVERYTHING.  Lot getting drunk and sleeping with his daughters after the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah....Jehu's wicked-awesome aim with his bow just plowing through army after army killing evil kings....Jezebel getting shoved from a tower and falling to her death only to be trampled so thoroughly her blood spattered the walls and dogs ate her in a matter of hours.....you know, the good stuff.  The Bible that recorded ALL of history and not just the short stories that seem to make everyone God has ever spoken to, perfect.  And in this I was isolated from my peers in Sunday School for being a know-it-all, Catholic schoolmates called me "holy", and when I reached the lovely teen years it took a while to dawn on me just how much people expected out of me.  The good one.  The "holy" one.  She-who-would-not-sleep-around.

College time came and I was surrounded by people worse off than me.  I mean, it's one thing to be a Christian.  It's a major problem when you're a Christian doing nothing but disputing scholarly texts, going on expensive 2-week mission trips and generally assuming you're just this much better than the other 7 billion on the planet because "I have the Light of Christ in me and they don't".

About a week before I left college to pursue my endeavors to be a normal human, I sat up in a class discussion, my chest contracted and breath just this short of heaving.  I was so....so....frustrated with the absolutely ridiculous notions I was hearing.  We only know God through writings?  Who wrote what about where?  Finally, I had to say what no one was even thinking, save for maybe the girl on the other side of the class who looked as worried and concerned as I felt.

"When you're staring demons in the eye, and I don't mean metaphorically," I began, speaking slowly so I would speak instead of scream what I needed to say, "what you know doesn't matter.  When you are face-to-face in the most literal, tangible sense with a group of actual demons who want nothing more than to devour your very being, it doesn't matter WHICH author you agree with!  They don't want to know who you've been reading.  They couldn't give a flying flip about which church you go to, how much you tithe, how much communion wine you drank at the last service....what matters is your IDENTITY.  Who are you?  If you know God, actually know Him personally and have a great relationship with Him on a one-on-one basis, nothing can touch you.  THAT'S what matters!"

Our professor was smiling.  My fellow classmates starting a rebuttal about how we get to know God through texts, and I slid down in my seat.  Oh.  My.  Freaking.  Goshen.  "If you want to get to know God, then just ask Him!  It's not rocket science!  You don't know someone by reading about them, you know them by talking with them and LISTENING." I shut up after that, since any following words would have been akin to that of St. Stephen who, as we all recall in Catholic school and any church that reads that passage before sermon, was stoned to death for calling the religious leaders "stiff-necked hypocrites" (modern-day translation: stubborn, stupid assholes).  That same professor was the only teacher I spoke to of my official exit, and he understood my reasons.  I think, in the silence, was the understanding of where I stood amongst "the throng" of Wheatonites.

Fast-forward 2 years, and one giant messy hell, later....

Me:  Hey, God....I know it's been a while....we haven't talked a lot....because, um...I'm dumb...and stuff....so, ah, would it be possible to get a little help with all this?  Because I'm really stuck, frustrated, and have NO way out.

God:  Are you done "being human" yet?  Or am I still on the side-lines?

Me:  Touche.....Yeah, I'm kind of sick of being human.  I miss the way things were with us.  You know, the whole 24/7 awesomeness.

God:  Great!  So you know what you have to do.

Me: *stares at my vices and groans*  But it's sooooo haaaarrrrddddd.......

God:  Yes it is.  And you know I am always here to help you, but you've got to put in the effort.  I'm not your magic genie.  I'm God.  I'm your Father.

Me: *sighs*  I dunno.....

God:  Okay, well when you do decide to return to Me, the door is always open.

What exactly do I have to do to return to better-than-just-human-status?  Reverse everything.  Meaning, resist the pull.  There are things that seem great at the moment in which I want them, but literally feel worse than a stomachache afterwards.  It's like detoxing from drugs.  Baby steps, and nothing gets accomplished unless you put in the effort.

Going to church...well, that's where this blog entry comes in.  Worship used to be a time to vent out the burdens in me, a sort of ebb and flow of "energy"....out with the bad, in with the good.  Now all I hear from the "stage" is "listen to me, I sing so pretty, fluffy fluffy blah blah blah".  Before, and after, services, it's all Christianese: "washed by the blood,"  "God has restored me from that car wreck, praise Jesus," "amen, mmhhmmm," "he/she has an evil spirit clutching to him/her,"  "I'll pray for you, brother/sister"......

GIVE.

ME.

A.

BREAK.

Whatever happened to reality?  I suddenly understand some of my late uncle's cynicism ( he was a soldier in Vietnam).  "How are you doing?"  "How am I doing? Well, let me tell you.  Life effing sucks."

"Aw, honey, I'll pray for you."  That's great.  Thank you.  Because we all know very well that 90% of "pray for yous" result in complete loss of memory over the subject.  In the rare case that someone actually follows through with the prayer, good things do happen!

The hardest part about returning to church is all the nasty little things I remember about nearly everyone in leadership.  Not that I ever wanted to know.  But they expected me to be a "true leader", and with leadership comes a good amount of gossip, guilt and confrontations.  It's difficult to sit still and listen to someone fluff about how God is good, everything is peachy, look at the colorful powerpoint slides with special effects.... when I so clearly remember the things they did.  How this leader abandoned and threw out students who needed God more than they needed Vicadin....how this other leader broke every promise he ever made....how she never smiles and only bitches, then sings about love and community like she's the star of the show that's SUPPOSED to be church....

Mom says church can always use one more hypocrite.  True, true.  But my biggest concern....where is God in all this?

God is not fluffy.  God is not the church bulletin, nor is he the color-by-number we give our kids (I once colored a page in Sunday School that said Jesus definitely rode dinosaurs in the ancient days.  No lie.  15 years later, a good friend from college found that same coloring page and posted it on Facebook!)

God is....He is power, might, virtue, strength, truth, love, forgiveness, mercy, wisdom, unchanging, unceasing, unending in His love for a species that continues to shove Him away.  When He works through you, oh man do you feel it!  Jesus isn't some lovey-dovey nice guy speaking on behalf of God.  He is God as a human, as one of us.  He didn't just walk the walk in everyday life as an average joe, He was flogged, beaten, whipped, stripped, falsely accused, spit on, kicked, punched, ridiculed, abused, and STILL lifted the instrument of His own extremely human death that weighed nearly 200 pounds and carried it through an entire city only to be nailed to it and die of an exploding heart (if not asphyxiation, hypothermia, or blood loss).  Then three days after being sealed in a no-returns-possible cave, He walked around smiling like He totally hadn't just died.  Very alive, very real, very true.

Not fluffy.