About a year ago I finished my thesis. A woman, after reading it, asked me with tears in her eyes if I still loved God. I remember standing there in the foyer at church, looking at her with this blank stare on my face, thinking, “Well, I haven’t thought much about that recently, if I still love God. That’s an odd question.” It wasn’t a question of belief or of faith, but of love, and that question has stuck with me throughout this past year.
I don’t remember my answer. It was probably something like, “Oh, yes. I do. I just understand that differently now.” This was and is a true answer. But still, a year later, that question is in my mind, and I find I don’t have an answer except for the above; I just have more questions.
“I love God.” “I love Jesus.” I see these bumper stickers and t-shirts all the time. And I say, “Blah-de-blah.” Forgive me if I sound irreverent, but what do those statements actually mean? To me, they sound trite. Perhaps it is the use of the word “love,” because: I love burritos; I love the color green; I love autumn; I love Nick; I love my friends; I love God. Again, blah, blah, blah. (I think, much of the time, when I say “love,” I really mean “fond of.” i.e. I’m fond of burritos; I enjoy them.) The word “love” has lost its poignancy because it has been cheapened. It is used frivolously and carelessly and for far too many different contexts. There is the feeling, there is the action, there is the interplay between those two things, and love is a many-colored multi-faceted verb-noun.
Perhaps it is my understanding (or lack of understanding) of this “God.” Perhaps it is my belief in and questions about truth and Truth and god and God that makes this concept of loving him/her/it/them difficult for me to grasp.
In the statement, “I love God,” those two words “love” and “God” are tricky; they are bigger than I can understand, and to group them together like that makes me think I must be setting myself up for confusion. It makes me think that I am cheapening something or that I am stepping into disillusion about understanding and appreciating something as infinite and incomprehensible as love and god.
Or perhaps the problem lies in my lack of understanding of my own love or of my capability to love. Thinking about what it would actually look like, internally and externally, to love God makes me aware of all the ways in which my life doesn’t reflect that concept. At the same time, I can also say that thinking about the ways in which I cannot and do not love God make me more aware of and thankful for love and grace. But then my mind heads back toward definitions: what is love, what is grace? And I continue to weave little patterns in my mind around these questions.
After a few years of struggling with questioning, I’ve come to a place where I’m comfortable (not comfortable like sitting in an easy-chair rocking back and forth, but comfortable in the way that I’m not having panic attacks every couple of nights) with existing in an up-in-the-air kind of place. I’m okay with having questions and not being able to answer them. I think the important thing is to continue to think and to learn—and I think if I really am learning well, I’m going to have more questions.
The black and white swirl together and things become much greyer, but there is motion. Thanks be to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment