Rationality

The single greatest thing keeping me from being a Christian is the fact that I don't believe my rational side can participate, and I don't want to be the kind of believer who is purely emotional.

I re-read C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle this week. Every time I read this book, it changes me. This time, the part that hit home was the part about the dwarves who "wouldn't be taken in again." There they are in a beautiful world surrounded by wonderful things to eat and fabulous joys, but all they can see is the stable they used to be locked inside. All they can taste is trough water. They aren't shut out of the real Narnia, but they can't ever enjoy it because they never realize that they are part of it.

It's time to face the facts: I am probably like the dwarves in this story. I am so afraid of falling on my face again that I choose not to run.

When I went to college, I went with the idea that I was going to kill myself. I cut all ties with people back home. I didn't even call my mother. I made up my mind that I was not going to make any new friends. I had a mission.

But of course, that isn't how things went down. I made friends. Even now, I feel like there are two stories happening here. The first is like this: I went away and was determined not to be the loser without any friends any more, so I did everything in my power (hung out in the dorm lounge, provided homemade cookies to all the guys on my floor, walked around offering candy to people and introducing myself) to make friends. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I had this big plan for how to leave the world without hurting anybody. Even now, it is such a broken thought process that I have trouble explaining it. I have difficulty telling which was the real me.

So when one of my friends told me that all I had to do was give it all to God, I lept on the plan. I went to counseling, and I threw my necklace in the lake, and I went to Vespers and church and chapel and Bible study. I became Super Christian. I drew up encouraging note cards and left them in people's POs. I chatted with people who were lonely and sad. I helped set up the sancuary at the church I was going to.

And you know what? The next year, a friend I had been praying for asked me how I knew that God was real, and I had no answer. This prompted a complete turn around on my part. I stopped going to church; I stopped going to chapel; I quit talking to God.

I have since come to believe that faith (and life, but for the purposes of this blog, faith) is sort of like a pendulum. There are two poles: Complete belief and complete doubt. Somewhere in the middle is the ideal of faith. Our lives are spent swinging between the two poles. This is normal and neccessary because without experiencing extremes, we can never balance ourselves out. This is not an excuse to live in the extremes, of course, but it is a way to recognize them as natural parts of our growth and move past them.

I understand that God saved me from more than just my sin. He saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life. Sometimes, I have trouble choosing a path, though, and end up like the dwarves of Narnia. I feel as though I am trapped by my doubt. At the same time, complete emotional belief is not the faith I want. If that is what is required, then I fear that I will never know true salvation. I cannot fall head over heels into a system without room for questions again.