Frustration

I am with so many of my secular friends fed up with much of Christianity. I am fed up of pat and simple answers to complex questions. I am sick and tired of mystery being traded for certainty, and adventure for false security.

The God I worship is so much bigger than the one many other Christians seem to worship. Secular ideologies often seem deeper and closer to the God I know than much of what I hear from Christian leaders. When I hear scientists go on and on about the wonders of the universe, that has more religious significance for me than much of what I have heard from the pulpit in my life. The glory of the infinite coming to us in the particular, the truth that Christ IS, is replaced by the simplistic vision of God's sacrificial lamb.

The glory of creation, of the complexities of God's relationship with the entire universe, is replaced by a clock maker building a clay house in a pool of water.

I see so much potential in faith in Jesus. I know that it can expand our minds, open our hearts, and lead to a community of people that truly can change the world. I've seen it, I KNOW it. But how often is Jesus Christ replaced...replaced with a clock maker who tinkers with a toy? "God is in control...everything happens for a reason...God never closes a door without opening a window...God never sends us more than we can handle" and on and on all I hear is SLOGANS, slogans that are designed to make people feel good, not to give glory to Ultimate Reality.

Ultimate Reality, y'all. That is what it is all about. Jesus is Ultimate Reality laid bare. He is the whole end of the evolutionary process, the secret unity behind the multiplicity. That is what Christianity should be all about. It should be mind expanding, leading us to adventure and away from security, safety and indeed even certainty. It is about living life as it actually is and not as we want it to be. It is no escapism, but embrace-ism. Jesus is God's 'yes and amen' to the human project...what we do MATTERS. That is the promise, that is the hope, that is the truth.

The hope for eternal life is an extension of the love of life, not an opposition to it. We must not fall into some cheap and simple marketing scheme, some vain attempt to control the vicissitudes of life and to control people. People are meant to be set free by Jesus Christ, not controlled.

I know it can be done. I know that Christianity has the potential to expand the mind rather than shrink it, to open people up beyond the limits of secularism or of traditional 'religiosity'. I have seen it. But it is hard sometimes, it is hard in this world where certainty is an easy sell, and love is hard work.