Indie rocker David Bazan talks about his loss of faith, his music, and how he sometimes fears he's going to hell.
I felt touched by his honest and real sharing, and his questions. I guess, maybe to a smaller extent, I can identify with his questions - after all, I went to Sunday school, but became a skeptic... but couldn't get off the nagging thought that maybe there is indeed a God. I had my own doubts, even after coming back to Christ. But God graciously cleared one of the most compelling doubts with this statement: "Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed." I guess God didn't meet me on my grounds. Instead, He challenged me to believe in Him on His own terms.
I guess it's the essence of a relationship - in the end, a relationship always needs trust. Even with God himself. "Trust Me," that is what God says. He always leaves a little room for our own choice to believe... though He's made it pretty compelling in terms of evidence.
And oh, a hard heart... I think...Mr David has a softer heart than he thinks. I guess it's the willingness to struggle with this question of God rather than totally ignore it and walk away, that shows the softness of heart to at least listen and consider. He's not of those 'who have a form of godliness but deny its power', I think. Better not to have any faith, than to have an empty Christianized religion that proves hollow and useless.
"Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah," said the LORD to the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 3:6-11.
During the reign of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, "Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel's immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood. In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense," declares the LORD.
The LORD said to me, "Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah.
Who knows? C.S. Lewis left the faith... went through the horrors of WWI, and came back as the 'most reluctant convert in the whole of England.' The apostle Peter denied Jesus three times. But they came back. And there are bishops who essentially are atheists. Can you imagine the irony?
*sober pause* Ultimately, it's really all about God's grace.
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