We’re In This Together
I’d like to say that building faith is one big exercise in “we’re in this together!” But unfortunately, we are… definitely. NOT.
Let’s be real, there are plenty of atheists out there who are actively unimpressed with God. There are just as many people who couldn’t give a BLEEP either way. These are the folks who just seem annoyed by the question or perturbed that anyone might believe there is a God or there is Good. Unlike atheists, who seem to revel in the opportunity to question faith, these folks just want to live their lives undisturbed by any of it. We are born, we live, we die, get over it.
The people around me do not know that I believe in God (or Good). They don’t know that I pray about them or for them. They seem to be vaguely aware of the fact that I am a little more chipper and slightly more resilient, but they haven’t asked me what pills I’m on or what I might be smoking.
I also feel like I still have a long way to go when it comes to real faith and trust, which manifests as a fair amount of doubt and fear on my part, so I’m not exactly traipsing around wearing white robes and walking on water. I have one person in my life, just one, who is aware of this experiment in my real life, and that’s because they are also faithful, so I knew they wouldn’t be disturbed by discussions of what God (or Good) did to me this week.
I mention all of this because life can feel like an uphill battle without faith, and with faith, it’s still a struggle. This is often because we encounter people all the time who:
a.) actively do not believe in Good (or God) and feel like they have to do everything all by themselves or everything will fall apart
b.) are openly derisive about those who believe
c.) are white-knuckling optimism and just BLEEPING winging it
d.) naturally just seem to believe in Good (or God) and have never questioned it to begin with
e.) do not give a BLEEP about Good (or God) and definitely do not want to hear about it
f.) think we should all believe in THEIR version of God (or Good) and will actively try to convince you that their version is the right version.
In other words, those who just want to experiment with faith without too many trappings and without being questioned are probably both the majority of us and also a pretty niche audience somehow simultaneously (it turns out there are a lot of paradoxes when it comes to having faith). I imagine there are a lot of people out in the world who just want to believe in something. That’s kind of where I’m coming from and where I hope to meet anyone bothering to read this blog.
So, even if we are doing our darnedest to believe in Good (or God), we are going to encounter a lot of people who just don’t, and won’t, or may not ever. The interesting thing is that I fundamentally believe that they are both on their own path AND an integral component of our journey in faith.
They both can either choose to believe or not AND be a useful, delightful, or incredibly painful part of building our faith. That’s the best and worst part about having faith, in my view. If we’re committed to it, then even the most painful moments and people must be part of us surrendering further to a power beyond our control. The heartache, if we truly believe, should be cause to dig deeper and believe more, not less.
Its strange - faith both makes us more capable of love and being loving and it isolates us… maybe isolates is the wrong word. It fortifies our strength and makes us more cognizant of and ideally more able to accept the basic human condition: we are all surrounded by life and each other and opportunities and connections, but also on a journey which is fundamentally all our own.
I, personally, like having Good (or God) along for that occasionally lonely ride.