WAVES OF REGRET
I'm battling a high level of spiritual ambivalence. Two incompatible visions of God dominate my mind - a vision of who I want God to be and a vision of who I think he is. I'm torn between a God who provides intimacy and a God who promotes independence. Today I gravitate toward the latter, confessing I've come to believe in a God, if I believe in him at all, who has little to offer me in this life. He may not be a God of condemnation, but he doesn't relate to me in any way I can recognize - which might as well be Hell.
I've been unexpectedly throttled by the very one I sought so desperately when I stepped from behind the veil of fear, and now I'm unexpectedly and desperately sad. A relationship with the one who stitched me together is all my heart has ever desired, but it's unspeakably difficult. The distance is so vast. I didn't anticipate such absence of contact and abundance of heartache when first prompted to pursue this and have no assurance that he is there or that he cares. In reality, all I have is a vague idea of who I think he might be.
A sort of weak Atheism is starting to take hold of my mind. Let's face it: I'm fumbling to embrace a theology I've never heard of before, and its lack of attestation makes it so easy to doubt. Additionally, it is a difficult road to hoe. Finally, there is no danger in setting down the staff and ceasing the journey. All of this makes Atheism very attractive.
Of this I’m certain: believing in this new God will require even more faith than in the one I cast away. It's just so much easier to lose faith in a construct of one's own mind. I have very little reason to have relationship with God now, for I no longer have any idea how to relate to him. If nothing else, perhaps this life has become my meager attempt to prepare myself for whatever comes next.
This journey has become speculation run amok. I've succeeded in imagining a God who conforms to my ideas of perfection. This is a dangerous game however, for inasmuch as I have uncovered this idea myself I have no assurance that my fantasies are true. I began with the assumption that some God does exist, and armed with that assumption I undertook the task of constructing a paradigm in which love was the one and only thing required of me. I took Yahweh as a starting point, but recognized that I did not find the scriptural account consistent with his claims of goodness. Under the belief that Yahweh did exist, but that the biblical authors may have misunderstood him, I began the horrible task of deconstructing him within the parameters of my new paradigm. Following this task to its logical conclusion ultimately required that I scrap the bulk of the biblical record.
Consequently, my God cannot be considered the God of the Bible. He is independent of any religious tradition I know of, and the long and short of it is that it is difficult to believe in a God I just made up in my head. Once my beliefs about deity forced me to sever him from the faith tradition he's attached to, further contemplation became the creative activity of an artist. As God shaped man, now man shapes God. Again, it's all speculation, and it has severely run amok.