Jeff's Story: Looking for God

All my life I have looked for God. For much of it I have been unsuccessful. I looked for God because I needed him. I was unsuccessful because I approached this the way I approached most things: I went after God with a very narrow little piece of my brain. I sought him the way I would seek the solution to a math problem, not the way I would seek out a missing family member or an old friend.

I ended up with a Bachelor's degree in philosophy. I got over half way through a Master's Degree. This was a very expensive way to find a God that didn't end up being very satisfying. The God I had, back then, he was intellectually consistent, sophisticated, cold, emotionless and meaningless.

I saw these people who seemed like they had the answers. I resented them--because I was jealous and also because sometimes they were smug and arrogant and unloving. I ended up falling madly in love with the woman who would eventually become my wife, who quite inexplicably was a Christian. I lived in denial of this. I told myself she wasn't like "those other Christians."

And then the last year of my life happened. God sent a variety of telegrams to me. They grew increasingly loud, but they all broadcast the same message. They messages weren't paper messages, email, or left on my answering machine. They were a series of life events that made it crystal clear to me that I am not self sufficient--that I need God. Not to complete a logic problem. Not as a set of propositions. But that I needed his love, and his support, and his redemption.

I thought about people who talked that language. People who talked in a language of God's love, that we need Him, both His support and His redemption. It was them--those Christians.

And so we ended up here, at this incredible church. Things changed slowly. I did not see the congregation as smug and unloving and arrogant. What I found was a place with an openness to questions, a place of genuine intellectual honesty. If I had come to that church ten years ago, or five years ago, I would not have seen this. I was not ready to see that my answers could be within a church. God made me ready, over the preceding year. When I was ready that place and those people were waiting for me. But it was slow and it was hard for me.

I liked the contemporary worship music. And the Pastor usually seemed to have something relevant to say. But I got ticked off, whenever he got too focused on that "crucifixion stuff."

Although I had a dozen or so major stumbling blocks, the big one, that was the crucifixion. I had made peace with the idea that I have messed up. I was even growing comfortable with that painfully unhip, old-fashioned admission that "I am a sinner."

But what I could not stomach was this: there seems no goodness in the idea that God would sacrifice Jesus for my wrong-doings; if I could get crucified, and therefore redeemed, that sounds horrible but at least fair. The idea that somebody would have to do this for me, instead of me, that God's son would, that seemed like Divine Child Abuse.

And I sought out some support from some people who are here, the assistant pastor, for example. And after seven years I was really ready to speak with my wife about her spirituality. The people I sought out were wise enough to listen as much as they spoke. And they were stunningly honest about the places where they had struggles, the things they could not explain, and the things they simply needed to accept. And this all brewed in my brain.

One night, I was weighed down by confusion. I offered up to God a sacrifice: I offered, in my mind and heart, all my confusion. And God took it up from me.

I felt a little ashamed. It was such an unworthy sacrifice. But I felt better, too. And it occurred to me: everything I have, everything I am, everything I have done, it is all unworthy. I have messed up and I will mess up and so it is never worthy of the author of everything.

I thought about how being in debt, that's as bad for the person who owes as the person who is owed to. There is something inherently good about being in-balance, having all debts paid. And I had this new understanding that spoke to my heart, but ironically, it was so intellectually satisfying, so acceptable to my philosopher-side. God set this up; an entity who has humanity, and is therefore qualified to sacrifice, but he was also divine and perfect and therefore worthy as a sacrifice. And Jesus, he willingly did it--because only he could. Not child abuse from the father, to the son. But something like this amazingly loving conspiracy.

I was staggered to discover that becoming a Christian, this big huge obstacle, it was only and simply a choice. I had heard those words about accepting Jesus as my savior, accepting my sinfulness. But accepting those things had always sounded like running a three minute mile or flapping my arms fast enough to fly; something inhuman and impossible.

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity. It turned it to mostly be the easiest thing I'd ever done. But in some other way it is also the hardest thing I have ever done. It is this continual decision that I don't live up to all the time. But I feel Jesus motivating and energizing me to have faith in him, it's this strange thing, like electricity running from Jesus the battery, along these wires of prayer, into me, a light bulb, and then back to the battery again, through wires of worship.

And those other stumbling blocks, they make me think and I struggle. I haven't worked them all out. But the thing is this: it's so clear to me I don't need to work them out now. There is somebody infinitely loving and infinitely wise and infinitely powerful and He's got it under control.

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