Hey Bird, I want to apologize if I came off as kind of pat in my last post… perhaps I didn’t give it as much thought as I could have… I was tired and just trying to think of something intelligent and encouraging to say, but I think I fell short. 
So I apologize if I just made you feel even more on edge. 
Believe me though, Bird, I can relate deeply to what you’re feeling about all of this. Christianity does often come off as rather nuts at times, as nuts as the world we live in. And there have been times I’ve out and out just hated the Bible, and I’ve even thrown it across the room a couple times I think, if I recall correctly.
There are passages in there that have driven me up the wall, that’s for sure.
And there are times I’ve just out and out hated God, and Jesus, and the whole she-bang, in those dark times that it has seemed like nothing more than a warped joke to me…
So I know how you feel on this.
And Jesus? It’s true that Jesus comes off sometimes as a disturbing figure, in the gospels… to be sure, the things that he’s recorded as DOING, (with a couple exceptions, like cursing the fig tree or the whole whip in the temple thing) are in large part really encouraging and loving, I think, but nevertheless a lot of the things he’s recorded as SAYING are difficult to comprehend or swallow.
So I hear you there. The Sermon On The Mount, for instance, and some of the harder edged parables, and the like, used to make me quite mad.
But then I get to thinking… and I should have explained this in my earlier post… that Jesus was a complex figure… not some hateful dictator who wanted to rule the world with an iron fist, who just hated people, who just hated his enemies, or who was malicious or vengeful in his intent, but then neither was he a fluffy bunnies kind of guy who didn’t care much about how you lived your life, even if your choices ruined your life or the lives of others, but who just wanted you to feel comfortable and hunky-dory, even if that feeling was just a pretty illusion, and even if you needed some serious spiritual surgery done… neither of these, but someone different, and someone complex, in a magnetic kind of way…
And perhaps Jesus was a complex figure because God is a complex figure. Not complex in the sense of being a monstrous sick mess of a being, but complex in the sense of being deep and impossible to chart… of not being readily understandable at all times and in all ways to His creation…
I really like this quote from G.K. Chesterton’s book The Man Who Was Thursday (still gotta read that, by the way, as I’ve run into several good quotes from it here and there):
“You want to know what I am, do you? Bull, you are a man of science. Grub in the roots of those trees and find out the truth about them. Syme, you are a poet. Stare at those morning clouds. But I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf — kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now.”
And I like this one from my fiancee, Kaylyn, too (just to balance this out):
“If we can’t trust God, then who can we trust?”
A book that helped me quite a lot in my view of Jesus early on, a few years ago, was Philip Yancey’s thought-provoking book The Jesus I Never Knew… he points out that Jesus is both comforting and tough, scary and compassionate, and that he is not easy to pin down or understand…
But for some reason all of this makes him a more authentic, realistic figure, at least to me. I just got the feeling sometimes, like Philip Yancey did, when I read the gospels, that he’s just not the kind of person you could make up…
The Jesus of the gospels is as challenging as he is encouraging, but for some reason that makes him more real to me. And that makes the God he is said to reflect and embody more real to me too, I guess…
The whole ECT thing though never really fell into this category of thought for me… I tried to fit it in there, but just couldn’t… it crossed a line that I couldn’t bring myself to cross, at least not completely, in my heart of hearts…
Being honest with people, even brutally honest with people, saying some pretty crazy and difficult to decipher things, and running against some of the normally accepted social behaviors of this world… that I can take… but eternally tormenting or just giving up on and abandoning the people you’ve made,just because they rejected you, and most if not all doing so out of some measure of ignorance or another?
That’s just plain messed up, and cruel, sick, and crazy, and I believe I’ve always felt that way about it, deep down…
But what about the ‘hard side’ of God? The way I think of it, or at least try to think of it, is that God is totally dedicated (whether we can see that or not) to making us whole, to healing our wounds, to setting us free from the things we’re in bondage to, and all in due time… that he’s the doctor who means to cure us, whether we like the medicine or not, and the teacher who means to teach us, whether we think we’re capable of learning or not, the parent who means to give us the best possible life, at least when we’re ready for it, whether we’re settling for second best or not (even though this is hard to believe, when it seems like God isn’t doing anything, like you said)… and such a God can be scary, even terrifying…
Like C.S. Lewis said in his book A Grief Observed:
“The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist.
The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.
A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport—might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.
The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.
But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur.
If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary.
For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.
Either way, we’re for it. What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’?
Have they never even been to a dentist?”
I remember this picture of God as a surgeon, when thinking of suffering, really encouraged and helped me, in a strange kind of way, and it still does, but it is still pretty scary… because then we have to think to ourselves, “how much do I have to go through just to get well?”
I guess what I’m saying is if God knows what we need, and knows we would be truly at peace once we have that, and would be, at least in the long run, miserable without it, and he is committed in love to us, then he will not stop until we have that… period. And that’s beautiful, to be sure, that kind of commitment… but it can be pretty overwhelming.
And as to the issue of perfection? I like this quote from the film Tron:Legacy:
“The thing about perfection is that it’s unknowable. It’s impossible, but it’s also right in front of us all the time.”
I don’t think perfection, whatever it is, is something static and ultimately boring, and about following all the rules and operating correctly within the system all the time, crossing every T and dotting every I, but rather something dynamic and fluid and alive… and whatever perfection is, I think it has a lot to do with relationships, and a lot to do with love…
for instance, in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus talked about being ‘perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect’, it was all in the context of loving our enemies. 
Or think of the statement in 1st John, ‘perfect love casts our fear’.
Perhaps true perfection has more to do with the contents of something like 1 Corinthians 13 then it does with following rules or keeping the law unswervingly… perhaps the law of love is the only law that really matters…
Of course all of this doesn’t take away your anxiety or your frustration, which I can relate to, and is stilled buried in me and comes out still in my more lonely and confused moments…
Bird, though a million Evangelicals would disagree with me in saying this, I honestly think it would be better for you to believe in no God at all, then to believe in a God whom you thought at the end of the day was just a monster… if that would make your life a little more bearable and a little more sane, then I’d say go for it.
This is coming from a former atheist turned an often doubt-ridden believer who has railed at his sometimes tyrannical conceptions of God, and is still recovering from ample and bitter skepticism… but by all means just go for it, if that is where you are at right now, and if that is what your heart is telling you to do.
That’s what I did for four or five years after high school, and as bad as it was, I think it was something that I needed to do at the time, and perhaps it was a necessary part of my journey…
But then at least try to keep this question in mind… what if God isn’t like that? That is ultimately the question we should all ask ourselves, I think. What if his being real was far better then his not being real?
I mean, if atheism is true then we’ll all be worm food eventually, and that’s it, and that’s not much to look forward to, if you ask me, and pretty much every religion out there (including much of Christianity, sadly, for that matter), it seems like, is all about what we have to do, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and all of that, but what if there’s really Someone out there (and also nearer then your heartbeat) who loves you unfailingly and understands you completely, and can answer every deep need and every deep longing in your soul, and is dedicated to all of creation, to giving each and every soul who has known life here on earth, in the long run, an abundant and full to overflowing and 'further up, and further in 'kind of life… what if God is like that? Then isn’t it at least worth a shot, looking for such a Being, being open to their existence and their ways?
And as to why things don’t seem to work out that way for you or me or others? Why does God seem so silent, so, well, dormant sometimes? Well, honestly, I don’t know. For all I know it could be to get some to seek him more desperately, so when they finally make contact they find he was in fact there all along, and they are all the happier for finding that out, and more so then they would have been if there was no struggle; or for others they learn something important that otherwise they wouldn’t have learned… I don’t know.
But it’s still a shot I’m willing to take. I’ve seen enough evidence in my life that God is real and that God is good to take that shot… ultimately, Bird, I’d say you should just believe in something that you believe is worth believing in, what rings beautifully and truly in your own heart, despite what I may say or what anyone else may say or even what the Bible may say or may seem to say… and if you end up being a bit off, or even way off, then I believe God will lovingly correct you when the time is right…
I know that sounds like a pragmatic way of thinking… well, so sue me, but it is, and I’m not ashamed to say it…
It’s how I’ve come to feel about all of this, about God and faith and everything, really… I still sometimes find myself giving dumb, pat answers to others, like I did in my last post here, and like I may even be giving in this post, but this is who I really am… an often dumb and pat seeker of truth, and peace, and real life, and real love, who is just bloody tired of beating his head against a wall; a bum crying out for a feast of grace, for a welcome home…
And I believe that this, UR, is what God has revealed to me, and it’s making some sense to me, and it gives me more hope then I’ve ever had before, so I’m sticking to it, at least until further notice. 
But I believe it more than anything because I want to, because it gives me hope… and 'cuz I’m just too damn tired of hanging my hat on things that tear me up and just kill me on the inside…
And that’s how I honestly feel about it. Sorry for being a dolt and not shooting straight with you.
May you be blessed, Bird, and may you find peace, and the hope and the home your heart is aching for… and may we all.
Matt
You are too kind to me and too hard on yourself. I don’t think you sounded anything like Tarzan. You always have good and thoughtful things to say.