Finding God in new ways

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Going to church is boring.
It's a provocative statement.  It's not because there's anything wrong with the church. I could try another one. I have done that before and not had much luck. Something might be a little bit better somewhere else, but that would not fix the problem.
For years the idea of going to church has been the hallmark of what being a Christian is about. We go for an hour - maybe two hours if you go to Sunday School too - and its the same thing every week. Maybe the names of the songs are different, and maybe there's a different series or topic now and then in the sermon, but essentially it never changes.
There was a time when I liked church and even looked forward to it. Now its more with a sense of dread that I wake up on Sunday morning. The church hasn't changed. I've no complaints. I think it is my that has changed.
The problem is not the church, and for a long time, I thought the problem was me. Now I am seeing that neither the church nor myself are to blame.
There is a great book, called Sacred Pathways, Gary Thomas, that gets at this problem.
It sounds kind of new age, but it isn't.  He talks about different pathways in the sense of how we relate to God. It is not about God but it is about how we relate, or how we get there.
Modern day Christianity presents a one-size-fits-all package, and the reality is we are all very different and one size does not fit all.  The modern-day package includes going to church, maybe Sunday School too, maybe being part of a small group and having fellowship with other believers.
Those things are ok, but I think I have changed some, to the point that these things no longer connect me to the higher power.
In his book, Gary Thomas talks about this very problem.
We all have different personalities. We all relate to things differently.
Thomas lists a few possibilities, and there may be more.
Some people are moved by music, some by study, some by acts of service. The key is to find the one that works for you or even the combination that works best for you.
A friend used to invite me to conferences. I'm sure the speakers were good, and the food probably was too, but I always declined. To me, there could be nothing more awful or boring than sitting around listening to speakers all day and then having to discuss those speakers.  I do this a couple hours a week and that's too much already, so a full day would be beyond what I could stand.
However, a walk in the woods, or even listening to some music, would do a lot of good for my spirit and my connection to God. Also thinking about some deep theological question would point me in a good direction.
Philippians  2:12 says, "continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
What this means is, we should continue to work out the details of our relationship with God. "Fear and trembling" is a phrase used in the bible to mean with seriousness.  The scripture's don't say to go church necessarily. But I think the implication of this verse is to find out what works for you. That may not be what works for other people. But this is not about changing God or the message of the gospel. Rather, it is about changing how we relate to God.
I found the book by Gary Thomas to be very helpful. He lists eight pathways, and he says you may find a combination of more than one would work best for you. There may be even other ways. There is a "test" in the book to find where you fit among the eight pathways, and that might be a good thing. But remember this is not gospel.
Thomas also recommends trying out new things, and to perhaps develop some new ways to appreciate God.

The eight pathways he lists are:

• Naturalist: Seeing God in nature, experiencing God in the natural world.
• Sensate: Using all of the senses - touch, taste, sight, smell etc.
• Traditionalists: These would be churchgoers who love the church. Rituals and such.
• Ascetics: Personal disciplines like fasting or other harsh treatment of the body
• Activists: Getting involved in your community, seeking justice for others
• Caregivers: Taking care of people or acts of service
• Enthusiasts: As the name implies, excitement and enthusiasm rule.
• Intellectuals: Studying, these are the theologians. Seeking new realities and truth.
• Contemplative: This can also be seen as celebrating, but it is meditation, focusing on who God is. A contemplative is more concerned with God than religion.

Each of these has its place, but the important thing is to find one that fits you and your spiritual temperament. But remember the pathway is yours, and not the one for anyone else. A pitfall in Christianity is that sometimes we find our path and expect others to take the same one.

For me its a heavy dose of naturalist and intellectual, with a touch of contemplative. 

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My spiritual journey: Rebel without a clue

It all sounds negative in some ways. There were questions that had no answers. There was being misunderstood. There was angst in the things I did not know.  At least to some degree though, I did know what I didn't know, and I knew that was a good thing.

I was still attracted to religion, like a moth drawn to a flame perhaps. There was this God-awareness that was always there just beneath the surface. I tried to sort out all the different groups and all the different beliefs. Why would God be divided, I wondered, as did St. Paul. I gravitated to non-denominational churches, not realizing this in itself was a division.

Separating all the different theologies was the salve that soothed me in many ways. It is said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and in some ways it was.  I could proof-text as well as anyone, and became adept and finding a phrase that fit in with what I wanted to believe.

Debating various theologies, I learned how to defend my own and discredit anyone else.  Some victories and some losses, but it always left me wanting. Wanting what I'm not sure. There was still something missing. How can you know? was my question. How can you know God?  Even though I did have that God-Awareness, there was still something I could not define.

This caused some people to stop believing in God, or to at least stop believing in religion.

I never could imagine not believing in God. How could you not believe in something that is obvious? To me, that was like doubting the existence of the Sun, or the earth itself.  This was no cause for boosting my ego and it did not make me feel better.  It actually made me feel worse.

This was my scenario.
I know for certain God exists.
Religion must know God, at least  I think it should.
Religion cannot answer my questions.
God won't answer them either.

Frustration and anger boiled. Which is worse? Knowing there are answers and not being able to find any answers or just not believing there are any answers in the first place?

My spiritual journey: Hope at last

I had tried reading the bible some, and even knew a few verses. It was hard to understand. Someone gave me a Living Bible late in my high school years, and that did change things. This was controversial at the time. The King James Version was seen as the gold standard, and some even thought the Living Bible was from the devil. I was a little surprised when I asked my pastor about it, and he said if you were reading the bible - even the Living Bible - that was a good thing.

And I did read it. I could understand it, and it was really enjoyable. I devoured it. I read the whole thing over a few weeks, and then started again. The barren landscape of my internal world began to not be so bleak. I just enjoyed the stories. I was beginning to get an idea about God and what God was all about.

It never occurred to me that these were actual stories of actual events. My first reaction to actually reading the bible was one of wonder and mystery. This mystery was different though. Before God seemed distant, unknowable. Now, it began to be knowable, but the mysteries remained. There was at least the possibility of understanding a little bit and that gave me hope.

Later on when I heard that you should take every story and every word literally, I just shrugged and didn't know if that made sense or not. I didn't care really. Just as I was well aware of my own internal world, which did not always line up with the external world, I felt this was a glimpse into the inner world of God himself. The stories were the point, not whether it was a literal account of history.

There was also something mystical about reading the words. They were different than other words. This was no ordinary book. My barren internal landscape began to bloom with color and shape. The rainbow river began to flow again.

The only problem was that it seemed like what they taught in church didn't line up with what I was reading in the Bible.  Church seemed focused on rules, things you did and so forth. Jesus said to love your neighbor and that was the fulfillment of the law. To me it was a contradiction anyway. 

My spiritual journey: Internal world

The anger simmered in the late teen years. Soothed by music, but still it was there just under the surface. I didn't know it at the time, but I had ADHD, and that caused issues in dealing with the material world. They thought I was lazy and not paying attention. I was really just bored and wished they would get to the point. Classes in school were frightfully boring. History almost got interesting, and creative writing was fun. Beyond that, I didn't care much.

I didn't at first know what the more important things were, but I was beginning to see my own internal world. The landscape of my own imagination, my own take on the world, and often the rest was just noise. The music would take me there, and to some extent I even made my own. I understood the spirituality of music. It was something that could transport me back to the rainbow river at times, but that was becoming just a faded memory. A nebulous thing of feeling good ant not knowing or caring why. I thought it was just the music.

After the Beatles broke up, they were doing individual albums. George Harrison – all spiritual and eastern influenced – made some great music. His song My Sweet Lord became my anthem.

These lyrics ..

I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you, Lord
But it takes so long, my Lord

That was how I felt, but how to do that? My internal landscape was barren, and while music was an oasis, it tended to dry up at times. The song stayed with me, haunting me. Church had rules and external trappings that could make you look religious. Harrison seemed to be on to something, but even he lamented that it took so long. So the search continued, and music was a huge part of that.

Church was about how people acted - the external aspects. I was more interested in learning about God - about relating to my internal world, but seemed unable to find a way to do so. It just seemed the internal world should be first, and the external world would be a natural reflection of that. That was the cause of the dissonance, or disconnect I had with the church. 

My Spiritual Journey: The long road

For years my world was a desert, but there was music, and that was what sustained me.

For a long time it seemed rules were all that there was. God was a mean guy in the sky that would smack you down if you sinned. Or at least send you to hell when you died, so you better not die. We were told to get saved and then be good. Or maybe you had to be good first and then be saved. But being good just involved avoiding certain sins. It seemed like a lot of times it was more about not getting caught sinning than actually avoiding the various sins. I wanted answers though, not just platitudes or more rules. I didn't know what I wanted really at the time, i wasn't even a teenager yet, but it was more just wanting to know the whys and hows of things. Even then the rules seemed like an easy answer to a complex question.

I did feel guilty though and perhaps that was what the rules were for. But my guilt was more than the rules. I wasn't smoking, drinking or whatever else there was. The casual eye I was a basic good kid that went to church and did well in school.  I wasn't a problem for the adult authorities. Inside was a very different story.

Overwhelming guilt and shame that soon came to live inside me. Secrets on many levels.

Some things I felt guilty for were not even my doing.  Seeing things no one should see before my teen years began, and secretly enjoying some of the sins of others. These were things no one talked about, and I sure didn't want to talk about it.  Sneaking peeks at forbidden things. Emotions smothering me from all sides. There was no one to turn to.

There were my little secrets. Only they would not have been little if anyone had known. I used to cry out to God for some sort of sense out of all of this. But there were no answers. There was humiliation around every corner. Someone who knew the secrets of things behind closed doors, knew my connection. Mutual embarrassment ensued whenever we would meet. I had to keep secrets. I did, and I even started keeping them from myself by erasing any traces  of things that happened in secret.

That was my own private battle. Much too complicated for me and certainly nothing I could ask anyone about. But then there was the social aspects of religion, church. I wanted to know God because I thought there would be some answers there, and I thought church would be the place to find it. I was mistaken.

The thing I saw was that everyone acted as if they were good, but they were not good. Christianity became a game. To be socially accepted, I did like every one else. I hid my sins, and pretended to be good. Some of my sins were not sins at all, but were just things I had felt guilty about. The hypocrisy of it all bothered me more than anything.  I also resented having to act like I was a good person when I knew I was not. I also resented having to pretend other people were good people when I knew they were not too.

I saw the human condition as one of weakness, sinfulness and despair. Yet religion's heavy hand was upon me. I wanted to know God, but God seemed so far away, so hard to understand. And in my dealings with most religious people, there was just pretending to be good. Now there were exceptions. There were some wise older women - older than me at least - who seemed to understand a little bit. They offered me hope.  A teaspoon of grace in a desert of sinfulness and guilt. It was a medicine I took eagerly, but they were the minority and often they were drowned out by the noise of religiousity.

I seemed miles - even worlds - away from the peace of the multicolored river of my youth. I could no longer see that place where i used to see God, and  could not feel his spirit within me anymore. I could barely even remember the river of rainbows. Were they just something I had imagined? Where was that feeling. Sunsets became just sunsets. I barely cared about the colorful mountains and fire in the sky anymore.

At some point I realized I would have to stop looking to others for answers. I was becoming an angry young man. They - those I had looked to as leaders - either did not know the answers or were refusing to tell me. I knew God. This was not what God was about, I knew, but even if I raised the question I got scolded or shunned. As my teen years began, I knew it was not God that was the problem. Religion just confused the issue - or at least the issues I cared about.

 Anger raged as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s. There was still some fear of the angry God who got mad if you sinned, but even that began to fade. People would say "God loves you." That only made it worse. What the hell did that mean? There were a lot of layers between me and God by then. And it would only get worse.

 There was a numbness that calloused over my heart as it sealed itself off from danger. Apart from anger at the frustration of not being able to find answers, there really wasn't much emotion.

 But it was there I found music. Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, even the Stones to some extent. There were others, but those were the ones that lasted in my mind.  They said the words I wanted to say. They had the feelings I wanted to feel. It almost seemed like they understood the things I felt. My anger was abated by their lyrics, their music. There was also the Allman Brothers Band. Their lyrics were not that much, but they had a sound that soothed my angered soul. The blues influence on 70s rock and roll became my savior.

In despair I was abandoning my search for God. Music at least consoled me. Still the emptiness was always just a step away. Late at night starring at the ceiling. Sometimes I would pray, but nothing ever got beyond the ceiling. God wasn't listening, and certainly wasn't talking.

I knew there was a hole in my soul that only God could fill, but where was God. How could I find God? Why would religion not reveal the secrets? Anger and depression began to rule. Music calmed me. If it were not for music I would not have survived. It was not the real answer, but it was a  life raft in a sea of bewilderment.

I started smoking in these years. The rush of nicotine seemed to fill me up and make me whole. I do remember one day thinking this was what I had needed. Thus began a lifelong addiction.  

My spiritual jouney: Descent to despair

The downward spiral began as the world unfolded in my pre-teen years. I wanted to know about God. God was the name I finally had for the rainbow river. The image of the multi-colored water was always in the front of my mind whenever we would go to church. I enjoyed the music and the stories in Sunday School. I thought I would find out more about the voice I had heard long ago, a voice that comforted me beyond anything I could understand.
But there was a dissonance that soon showed itself.
I felt the tug of church and religion, but when I went there, all I heard about was rules. Don't drink alcohol. Don't smoke. Don't cuss. The list went on, even things I had no idea what they were. Well I was a kid. I had never drank or smoked, but I had cussed some. I knew what that was. I tried not to cuss so God wouldn't be mad at me, and it was a long time before I would indulge in alcohol or tobacco.
There was a lot of talk of hell and burning forever. I didn't want that so I went forward and said the prayer, but nothing happened. Nothing changed.
It was all just so confusing. If you go forward in church and say a prayer you will be saved from hell. But then if you sin again, God will be mad at you and you will go to hell. So you had to go back down in front and get saved again.
The thing that bothered me most though, was that there was no emphasis on God. No talk about how to know God, how to learn about God. It was just rules.
Then to add to my confusion, after church, the men would gather and smoke on the front steps while the women did whatever it was they did before getting to the car to go home.
I still looked for the voice, but couldn't hear it. Even the mountains started to not look as glorious as they had looked before.
The rainbow river even began to fade from my consciousness.
Fear and despair became a cloud that pursued me. Fear of what I had no idea.
Even in the darkness though, a small light shined. Someday I would know what God was really like, or what the reality was. I knew the rules, but somehow I also just had a feeling this was not the real thing. God would make sense right?

My Spiritual Journey: Beginnings

I saw God in nature way before I ever saw anything in a book.

My introduction to God was great. A rainbow colored river flowing with warmth. It was undefined, just like the voice at the rainbow river, but I still felt it was that something that was out there – something that was not the same as myself or other people. It was good. But at the time I had no words for it. 

There were also images that seemed to communicate something to me.

There was a painting someone had done, and it was on display at the church. The painting was amazing, lots of colors. There was a river in the painting, and it had colors as well, so I imagined someone else had seen the same river I had seen. I didn't know how paintings came about, but I imagined it was the same river.

I looked at that painting every chance I got. And sometimes I would just stare at it in wonder. The sky in the painting was great too. It looked the way the real sky looked. I remember going outside in very cold weather, shivering and looking up at the night sky. This was rural Appalachia so there was not a lot of light noise. You could really see the sky.

As I looked up at the Milky Way, the vastness of the sky and all the stars, I felt that same thing I had felt at the rainbow river.

Another thing was the view near my house. The mountains were layered and you could see lots of hills. We were halfway up one mountain and you could see the valley and the layers of hills and mountains across the way. The mountains faded into the western sky, there was no end to them, they just faded away.

In the fall especially, the sun would set between two particular mountains. All the leaves were changing and the mountain was alive with orange, yellows and reds. The sunset also changed the sky to various shades of red, and combined with the visual of the mountains. There was also a blue shade of the mountains in the distant horizon as the sun set, as the reds in the sky faded.

The sunsets also gave me that good feeling. Those colors became my new rainbow river.

The only frustrating thing was, I couldn't talk to anyone about this. When I tried it wasn't understood or taken seriously. It could also be that I didn't know how to articulate it and also didn't know what I even wanted as a response.

Somewhere along the line I started hearing about God. Parents, adults in general, going to church and hearing the stories. I liked the stories. Noah and his ark. Father Abraham, and Jesus. Joseph and his coat of many colors. That always made me think of the river of rainbow.

God had created the world in seven days.

And I knew that it was the same one that had spoke to me at the rainbow river. So now I had a name for the voice, a name for the feeling.

I still knew nothing about this God, but I felt good whenever I thought about it, especially if any of those images were close by.

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Beatitudes: Blessed are the pure in heart

Matthew 5:8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

The pure in heart refers to who you really are. It is not an outward legalistic righteousness that purity refers to. Often in modern Christian circles purity refers to sexual relationships, but much more than that is in mind here in this scripture. Pure in heart means a single mindedness that is preoccupied with God. It involves the thoughts, desires, purpose, will, understanding, and character. It is who you are inwardly. Purity means not being hindered by worldly things. Often sexual purity is in mind, but there is also greed, hate, bitterness, unforgiving attitudes, judgement of others and other things that keep us from being pure in heart. The previous beatitudes said "in spirit," but here it says "in heart." Maybe Jesus didn't mean anything different other than he was just using a different word, or maybe it was a slight change in meaning. 

They will see God

They will see God. This can refer to the revealing of God at the judgement at the end of the age when our eyes will literally see God. But it also refers to the spiritual eyes that can "see" God now.

This purity is also obtained by faith. There are countless books and such to help you grow spiritually and can help, but it is God who makes us pure, and we receive that by faith.

In our lowly human state, we cannot be completely pure. Paul said we see through a glass darkly. But with the eyes of faith we can see God when we rely on the purity of Christ.

Pure by faith

Im not sure I have ever felt pure in heart really, though I have felt that i've seen God in nature and in music, and even in religion at times.

But perhaps you would not feel you were pure if you were pure, because purity is not egotistical at all.

There seems to always be some worldly thing that is still there, no matter how close i feel to God. I guess it is just the human condition.

Still, i don't think purity is something to be sought. We should seek God instead, who will give us a pure heart.