I’ve recently returned to Christianity–a turn in my life I think would surprise many of my friends, considering my extremely liberal and humanist adolescence and early adulthood. In many ways, I still believe and hold to many of the truths I discovered over the years of my spiritual questioning and exploration, and calling myself a Christian still feels a bit foreign to me. I admit I’ve had a history of skepticism and even disdain; there was even a very distinct, very awful time when I very clearly remember declaring to my quiet and tense family that God did not exist. For this reason, I am reticent to talk about this change in my life, even though it is a deep and profound change that has begun to shift the way I think about myself and the world around me.
I’m no evangelist–I’ve never believed in or felt comfortable telling other people how to live their lives, what to believe, or that they are somehow missing something essential, especially when they are kind, loving people. I suppose it’s the humanism that marked some of the most formative years of my spiritual growth, but I’ve always prickled at the idea of evangelism or missionary work. So I hope you know that when I talk about Christianity here, or my spirituality, it is not to persuade or even instruct; it is simply the manifestation of a personal (but I think relatable) search for meaning, purpose, and truth.
That being said, one of the tenets of my patchwork belief system that bridges the gap of my conversion is the notion that God is love (and, conversely but importantly, that love is God). It’s the backbone of my current fledgling Christianity, and the foundation upon which I am trying to build my future. For me, love is often the answer to the questions of the world–even the complicated questions. Indeed, I think most of my ethos could be summed up in the equation that Love + Education = Empathy, which opens the door to many solutions.
Something that I’m beginning to learn through my reintroduction to Christianity, however, is an element of openness or acceptance that seems necessary to make the equation successful. One of my strongest character traits (whether a blessing or a flaw depends on the situation) is stubbornness, and that sometimes makes having the obedience necessary to faith very difficult. Faith seems comprised of patience, obedience, trust, and a little bit of insanity–traits that contradict the practicality of my headstrong past. To trust in something invisible, to have patience in the judgment and actions of an unseen entity, and then to obey the commands of that entity–everything in my analytical side rages against the idea. Honestly sometimes I wonder if I accepted Christ partially as a challenge to myself; a challenge it has certainly been reconciling these two sides of myself.
The more I immerse myself in this community of believers, however, the more I can feel myself stretching. Maybe “myself” isn’t really the right word to use–what I feel stretching is something like my soul, my concept of self, my worldview, and my limits. It’s similar to my experience in my undergrad, in a particularly engaging and rewarding class, where the literature expands in my mind like bread rising, or dye dropped into water, coloring and increasing my thoughts. Except in this case, the book I’m exploring is myself. And when I’m exploring myself, the journey is obviously intimate, and there are places where I must remember to be gentle, but it’s also exciting, because the book is being written as I’m exploring it.
This means that at certain points, things will contradict themselves. But the openness and acceptance I’m learning through my parallel induction in faith means that I can see these contradictions less as imperfections and more as the stones upon which I’m building myself. The events, experiences, feelings, and convictions of my past have been heavy things, carried through pain and pleasure, but the heaviest stones make for the strongest foundation.
We are fragile things, but we are also flexible. What we lack in armor we make up for in pliability, if we don’t forget how to bend. I think for a long time I had forgotten–sometimes it’s much easier to forget–but I am beginning to remember. It’s uncomfortable sometimes, but for the first time in a long time, I accept what is uncomfortable as a lesson, as a further expansion of myself, with open and expectant eyes and, inexplicably, a heart full of trust.
It is a welcome change.
