You always find out quickly where this hopeful candidate stands on this or that issue - but it never seems a fierce, firm stance.
Far removed from the influences of church and the supposed "brainwashing" that people say happens if you teach your child what you believe, I became firm on where I stand after many months of seeking and studying on my own.
Many people go through it, but most people won't voice it. The one thing that finally makes you walk away from a God you don't truly know, a religion you just don't understand, and a way of life that has felt more forced than free.
My day came after, oddly enough, attending a sweet four months old funeral. His daddy stood up and with Luke not more than three feet in front of him, resting in that tiny casket, started to proclaim that God was good, and He knew this was how long baby Luke would have, and they would trust in the faithfulness of God.
I sobbed more that day for my complete brokenness and confusion than I did for what the event represented - utter and complete despair and a hope not yet realized.
All things made new. God is good. I didn't get it. If that had been my child, I certainly wouldn't be lifting my hands in worship, praising God while my tender baby lays in a box about to go forever in the ground. I shudder to think what my response would have been before my belief in God.
So I left, beyond confused and absolutely done. Who believes this stuff?
Of course, I gave God one last chance. Told Him if He was actually real, He'd have to prove it. And if He was real, how was He good with the loss of babies? With the deaths of mommies? With granddaddies being on the losing end of cancer? When your husband says, "Never mind, I'll be happier with someone else?" When you try and you try and the thing you hoped for is a hope that becomes a crushed dream? When everything, in the span of three months, is taken away and you realize all that worth and joy you had is actually at the bottom of the gutter, molding?
Right away, the blinders came off. I saw how easily I had been sucked into religiosity and piling up my gold stars without ever actually knowing anything of Him. I was the older brother. All my life I had worked and He had never given me what I thought I so deserved (see, see??? My chart is full of my gold stars!!!). I had no affection or desire for this Creator who intimately knew me and had formed my inward parts. The One who knows my thoughts before they are even on my tongue.
So I battled. Long and hard. Weary and burdened. And over and over He showed His abundant love and mercy and grace. That yes, He loved me! I didn't have to earn it (the charts went in the trash). He knows. Deeply, personally.
At a time, when I wasn't searching, He picked me up, swept me away and revealed His goodness in the midst of broken hearts and crushed dreams.
My stance is His stance. And I'm firmly rooted in it. For me, there is a very noticeable line between wrong and right, black and white, good and bad.
Yet, none of that is too far outside the boundaries of His all consuming and ever redeeming grace. So who am I to judge? All though, time after time I do. And steadfastly, continually, He loves me still.
In Him we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight...
Ephesians 1:7-8
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