The book I began writing and a change of heart...

A few weeks ago I was at a serious spiritual low. I had felt totally disconnected in my walk with God, very discouraged. It all began after senior trip. I decided to write a book about theological problems and certain beliefs I had. To this day, I look back a little embarassed, but at the same time I believe that this has some spiritual depth to it. If you decide not to read this I still beg you to read section 4 on prayer. This is basically my first blog. I just hope you can understand where I hope to take this is the future. Enjoy! 

At the Time of Writing…

Introduction

So…

These first three writings took place sometime last week, towards the end of May, right after my senior year. I had been struggling in my prayer life. These topics are actually very prying and fist shaking. They demand answers from God on certain topics which of course is a little naïve considering that not all topics can be answered. You can’t just expect everything to make perfect sense in your mind regarding a God you can’t see or truly experience with your five senses. I think our god isn’t God if he fits inside our heads. Rob Bell discussed in the Velvet Elvis that he thought that once a person compiled all their beliefs about God and became close-minded that they had in a sense built God. Imagine a wall of doctrine. Much like a skewed version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. Each brick is a piece of doctrine or theology you believe in. Once you take a brick out they all fall and the wall is very unstable. But if each doctrine is like a spring on a trampoline you can bounce on it and let them all stretch, because after all, they are just there to help you jump higher. So I give you the first three parts to my writings.

0.

I currently am a little low in my spiritual life, coming out of 2 years of difficult learning experiences and a number of people urging me to pursue writing has lead me here.  I don’t want this work to come across like another person writing a book about their life, I believe there’s a time and a place for everyone to share their story. But taking up your time for that seems very cliché not to mention rude. I think there are certain insights I pray that God would allow you to see or possibly open you up to. And if it is His will maybe you’ll be horrified and rebuke my discussions.  I also don’t want this to come off as a Rob Bell book, where I raise more questions than I answer. I thought however that I might blend the two. There are a lot of things I dislike about both of those aspects, but I hope you, the reader would find certain awe-inspiring thoughts or discussions raised. So good luck, I pray that you would find something good in here to point out. Some things I have written may come across very doubtful of God and his power, and my faith may appear little. But I am not writing about what I do believe. It would be pointless to point out everything that I do believe. Read a church mission statement if you want good beliefs. Maybe sometime later in the book I will point out my stances and what makes me believe in my faith.  But I am trying to stretch things. Certain biblical doctrines I have a hard time wrapping my mind around, stories, and ideas that make your head hurt. These are certain viewpoints I find might possibly go along with scripture that I hold or am struggle to an extent to understand. I have a good friend whose Facebook says that one of his interests is “having conversations that make your brain hurt”. I hope that you enjoy these as much as I do.

1.God

On the aspect of God, I do believe in Jesus Christ. As I’ve gone through life I’ve been told God offers you tests. He will withdraw from you, never totally or even in actuality gone, but in a sense you lose what you know him to be. I could be totally wrong on this, but I believe the bible offers support (speak to me for references or look for them yourself). God uses these times to strengthen our faith, to shape us in character, and in our relying on him to get us through each day. These times have been the hardest for me, but after I have become much more stable in my faith. There is a more solid foundation.

2. The Holy Spirit

Right now I am in a stage of losing faith. A visit to the doctor’s office gave me more than I had intended once I began scrolling through Time magazine. I love the ever present variety of educational topics that are available in Time, and every time I step foot in that Doctors office, I will pick up the latest issue. What deeply troubled me was an article I read about a neurologist who said he could physically prove that communing with the almighty may just be certain areas of the human brain communicating with each other. Which got me to zone out to a completely different world for the next twenty minutes. Think about it? What if your religion is really just you communicating with yourself? We all would be speaking to ourselves as if God was really there, but in reality he would only be a figment of our imagination. I was so deeply troubled by this. Someone bringing forth evidence that it is all in our heads. It rocked my world. For the next few weeks I sought out answers and to this day not one comforts me, as I would’ve hoped.  I was more worried about souls that communing with my head. If you take a step back and look, is there any physical evidence ever that we have souls? From the other point of view since there is no evidence it can be invalid. But I still strive to know the answer. I realize that there IS a spiritual word and that this infinitely intelligent and vast universe did not spring from itself, there was a creator. I believe Christ is the only answer to this. But, looking at physical evidence (I really wish I had the finishing touches on that Time Magazine report), there arises doubt. Doubt that makes it uncomfortable to go about life the same without having that question comfortable answered. After all, if we just mindlessly accept whatever comes our way we become Mormons, just kidding. We become followers of something without knowing why. We don’t own the faith for ourselves. I absolutely hate to see someone who claims my Christian faith who lives the opposite. Just because they have their fire insurance doesn’t mean they can live life however they please.  Which makes everyone who tries seemingly a douche bag.

 Now think about it, how do you know you have the Holy Spirit inside you? There is zero evidence. My search made it even more confusing.  People said he is a spiritual and actual being. People say he came about once Christ left, but what is different about our generation than the generations without the Holy Spirit? How can we look at a human and know that an actual holy spirit has manifested itself in you and what is manifesting in this context?  It is possible that the Holy Spirit is the beginning of a transforming of a mind, a certain nickname for that change in a persons mindset once they accept that Christ is God. But is it possible that the Holy Spirit is the perfect actuality of who Jesus is? Since everything Jesus was about was contradictory to what human nature is, wouldn’t it make sense that something else could be at work? As if Jesus and his spirit, which was giving and totally transcendent to God, was somehow taking a form in your life. I do believe in the Holy Spirit. I have to because I do believe everything God says about Himself is the ultimate reality. Now what I think is possible is that a soul is the essence of who someone is that is somehow a tangible thing separate from this reality.

Back to the soul question, what changes inside of us once the Holy Spirit is in us? These people who claim the faith but don’t live it, that makes it tough. In the scriptures it talks about the farmer who plants the seeds. Some accept it and take it in, others it bounces right off their heads, and still others hear it reject it. So what happens when someone proclaims the faith but his or her life doesn’t show it. Take an example of a kid I had the opportunity to play baseball and attend high school with. This person wasn’t godly at all from what I had known. I observed this person for nearly a year and never once seemed to be convinced of his faith. He died. Everyone went into this frenzy about how much he loved the Lord and “Man, he was discuss the scripture with his girlfriend right before he died”. Which is all well and good. But would you think differently if it came out that this person died of complications of the drug heroin? Now think about it, seriously. I had seen no action of faith in this person’s life, but everyone was saying how much he loved the Lord.  But we can tell a persons heart by their fruit. I don’t mean to judge this person or anything they did, but I think it’s hard. This is a tough example of not knowing who is saved or unsaved. When you say what you mean about Christ from your heart or “pray the prayer”, is that what keeps you from hell, no matter how much you turn the other way in your life?

3. Jesus Christ

Now I don’t think that I am about to say anything radical that could possibly make me look like I misinterpret the scriptures, but I have a few questions to bring up about the resurrection. I also realize we could continue to question this forever on the finer points. But at what point and for what reason did Jesus have to die by crucifixion? Think of it by this illustration: Rob Bell in his book “Velvet Elvis” states that Jesus is woven into the core of this universe. He is God and creation screams out his name.  What if Jesus, being a perfect human being who died without sinning was what canceled out sin? Seriously, It wasn’t that God demanded a penalty and as it was that each of our sins were somehow tallied up and paid in full by his brutal and savage death. But that it was the fact that sin, in itself had lead to the demise of humanity, cutting us off from perfect fellowship with the father, ultimately ended in death. He was sinless, born of a virgin. Jesus was literally born without being tied to Adam and his sin since there was no man involved. So is it too far out to think that Jesus dying was actually God able to say since this human (who was 100% human and also 100% God) and lived a sinless life, I can see actual good in them. Since humanity by nature is sinful, he broke the barrier. So those who live under the influence of that essence of who Jesus is (the Holy Spirit) I can see the good in them as well! It’s in the way that they make actions contrary to the self-seeking nature they are born into. That could be what the Holy Spirit evidence is. It’s almost totally freakishly outlandish then to do something like get on your knees and pray that the Lord would reveal what He would want you to do, and that you could conform your path to His words in the Bible. It’s a beautiful thing. This really is the ultimate reality in our universe I believe.

4. Prayer

            Something that was discussed in the Time Magazine article was how prayer was something that possibly could just be our minds talking with another part of our minds. This is something that I have thought before at times when I pray. That I am simply talking with someone inside my head. My mind is bringing back responses. I also realize full well this could be God. But what is it that makes our words prayer? Is there a certain line of access that we can use anytime we want to talk to God? A very terrible illustration would be a phone line. Do you really think our prayer life is like a phone line? Because our real lives are not like phone lines so what makes a prayer a prayer? God is totally almighty over this so it isn’t as if I truly think I can wrap my mind around everything about Him. Yet is there something I’m missing? Is it that God hears everything we say no matter if it has in Jesus’ name attached to the end or not? That He will aid us in our lives according to His good, pleasing, and perfect will? Something to think about. I believe in the power of prayer. I once prayed for a girl who possibly would’ve been pregnant as a freshman in high school. The situation was very grim. Two teen boys had unprotected sex with her and there was no reason she shouldn’t have been pregnant. But through much prayer, and I mean prayer every time I thought about it, and many others constantly prayer, she was not pregnant. I know, you could say that the probability of that isn’t terrible, even without God’s interference (I hate that phrase because I believe he is involved in the tiniest detail whether we want Him to be or not). If you did say that then I offer you one more story.

            The biggest influence on my high school developing years was a youth intern named Mike Szoradi. He had grown up in the church I had grown up in, and my father taught him in Sunday school. We instantly connected when I got a job at Fossil watches. He was the third key manager and I was a sales associate. He was to me, the embodiment of what it meant to be a sold-out follower of Christ. Recently his wife had become pregnant. She was due to have a baby towards the end February of 2007. On October 3 she went into an emergency c-section due to serious complications in the term threatening the baby and mother. This is nearly 4 months prematurity. The odds of survival were under one percent. The prayers came back this time. As a youth group we would always pray for Mike’s baby, that he would work out His perfect will in the situation, because we were praying for a miracle. We prayed non-stop for the situation to leave the baby unharmed, but above all let His will be done. There was little to no chance the baby would survive her first night. The next day we began praying, but I still was waiting for when the baby would actually die. It was a week or so that had passed and they were beginning to run tests on the baby. There was a certain chance she would have brain damage due to the fragile skull, and an almost certain chance that she would be blind as well. The tests came back completely negative on both. The doctors were completely amazed and touched by how this baby did not have brain damage. Because of how fragile she was when brought out of the womb there would almost certainly be bleeding on the brain. After a few more days her kidneys failed. She bloated up like a balloon. Because of all of this pressure on her small body there was again almost certainly going to be brain damage. Test. Results. None. After a day or so they began working again and she slowly began to lose the bodyweight that had made her swell. The fact that the kidneys failed on such a fragile life would almost certainly lead to the death of the infant. But prayer was a constant in this situation. Non-stop. Every night. Every week at youth group we would meet after and hold hands to pray for Lexi Szoradi and that God would continue to work in her situation. So far the baby had overcome all odds and was completely unharmed despite being four months premature. Now the baby still faced months in the hospital. The bill for this stay in the hospital was already in the millions. The Szoradi’s had no insurance to pay for it. So they applied for insurance to at least help aid. There was nothing that insurance company would do because of the ridiculous risk involved. The next week at church a woman whose sister worked for State Farm approached the couple and begged them to talk to her sister to see what she could do. So a few days later they went in to see what she could do for them. All this time the prayer was absolutely unceasing from probably around a hundred people, though I could be completely wrong.  All I know is that she told the couple there was nothing she could do. Then took a second glance at the papers, noticed a detail not seen before. She began to explain that every. Single. Cent was going to be paid for. All bills for Lexi were 100% covered. Now tell me that is not a miracle. I am proud to say that Lexi is living a completely normal childhood. Despite four months prematurity. It truly only was because of the prayers that were lifted and the recognition that God was the only one who could aid in the situation. There was under a one percent chance she would survive. I think I see the evidence of God.

5. Actions

            Do you really think it is okay to smoke as a Christian? I think that over my years as a Christian it has been hard for me to rationalize smoking and drinking. I even strived to prove that marijuana could be absolutely fine for a Christian to smoke. But something more difficult for me to get past was smoking. Think about it. Only one reason is enough. Do you never feel, that in the slightest, that the Holy Spirit is saying “Michael, there is better things for you than smoking?” Would Christ smoke? It is bad health wise, therefore detrimental to your body. Of course, you could throw the argument that our air is detrimental to our bodies as it is full of smog and pollution. You could say the same for soda.  But something so blatantly terrible for your health cannot fall into the same category. Sure one cigarette won’t give you cancer or yellow teeth or even black lungs but does it convey the image that we as Christians are to uphold in this world? Not that we are expected to be perfect, but this is an almost arrogant attitude saying that we can be in the world and still belong in society and love Christ. People look to Christians because they know there is supposed to be something different about us. It is supposed to be conveyed in our actions, and in that way people will see and want to join us in this joyful lifestyle. We really do have expectations to live up to. That we will act as the one who we follow acted. Which leads me to another discussion

6. Fakes

            I struggled for so long going to Valley “Christian” High school with being a Christ follower. It’s almost harder to be an open believer there than I would imagine it being at a public school because people there claim Christ’s name as well and look at you funny for not being a part of the crowd. Not being popular or wanting to worship God, or expressing your distaste for things that may be sinful there. After all, everybody there has to claim the name of Christ to enter the school. So, not limiting fake Christians to Valley Christian High School, there is a certain disheartening that comes along with trying to sell out your heart, soul, and mind to Jesus Christ. Because when you are following the spirit to the best of your ability, there is someone out there who isn’t and is wearing your favorite t-shirt of your favorite band, when they don’t really listen to them. Your trying to show the world what it truly is to be a Christian. It’s not just a set of rules and things you can’t do or fun you can’t have in order to escape hell. It’s truly being able to live life to the fullest. There is such a joy with realizing that if you follow the lifestyle the bible shows you will have joy and peace constantly. Is it ever better than this? As a human when your actions transcend yourself, you truly feel purpose. You can feel free; you can live without the weight of guilt (you don’t have to be perfect, God knows you aren’t). Your actions will change who it is you are the more you grow in an intimate spiritual relationship with your savior. There is a flexible path that the Lord has set out if you stick to his word; act justly and love mercy, and you walk humbly with your God.