Where to start...?
I posted here a bit about 4 years ago, when I was a Christian. A naive, sheltered, white and middle-class Christian. Needless to say, despite a fair grasp of my faith, it wasn't prepared for what a theology degree at Oxford would demand of me. For context: I'm currently 21, in my final year. I was a Christian all my life, raised Baptist / Anglican / Evangelical (Broadly middle-of-the-road Protestant in theological terms. I moved churches a fair amount.) until I came to university when I was 19. I was a Christian there for the first year, then I met my fiance and for the past year and a half have been agnostic.
The challenges of all the presuppositions that I used to hold were easy enough to deal with; questions on socio-historical context of the bible, historicity, hermeneutics and assorted doctrinal and philosophical questions about God as a whole. The faith I thought I knew was gradually unpicked. But, I view that as a healthy process. Rabid conviction in propositions about God is in essence idolatry (Or, if you prefer, a projection of one's subconscious ideologue into the divine sphere; one's existential, idiosyncratic perception of the zeitgeist. Whatever) - to not question such things would have been wrong. I wouldn't trade what I've learnt for anything.
Still, the end-product of this was the shattering of a superficial shell of faith; that is, faith in faith (That is, conviction in statements about God, found in dogmatics and exegetical frameworks etc...) rather than a subjective commitment to union with the divine reality which is relationship with the God. I aimed toward it, but couldn't find it. In addition, I didn't feel that I could have formed especially functional relationships with the other Christians in my college, I became increasingly uncomfortable at churches in Oxford. I joined a couple of societies where I made friends that understood me and didn't seem to judge me or make any assumptions about what constituted 'appropriate' or 'correct' Christian praxis. Such judgment isn't conscious, it isn't malign, but it's there nonetheless - exemplified in the beliefs assumptions that were in that particular group and ran into dissonance when I questioned them or collided with them. In short, we had different priorities and different emphases.
The people I got on with were different. I essentially said 'bugger it' at the end of my first year, and ended up leaving the smouldering wreckage of my socio-spiritual situation which was labelled Christian behind, and wandered around in agnosticism for a fair while. I encountered different political and social ideologies, which made more sense than Christian interpretations. Marx seemed to justly criticise the worst excesses of organised religion. Feminism meted fair judgment on the patriarchal, androcentric and often homophobic nature of Western, mainstream Christianity - despite advances in the modern church. I grew beyond myself and actually became what I hope is an existing, self-aware and engaged individual, whereas before I was in a pre-critical state of intellectual and - I realise now - spiritual paralyzation.
But for all that, I cannot find a way forward from here. Every time I consider the faith I knew, I find myself feeling angry, hurt and sick at all the things that it did to me. My sexuality was infected with guilt which a failed attempt at repression brought about, despite prayer and reading the bible with feverish desparation, day in and day out for 5 years. From that struggle, came a real self-loathing and sense of worthlessness, a feeling of being genuinely filthy. Unclean. Whatever prayer did to mitigate and submerge the feelings, they continually re-emerged. I lived, not really in misery, but in a state of perpetual insecurity and doubt and fear, the echoes of which still persist. But the further I get from it, the more I slowly begin to heal.
Yet for however much I grow, stronger and more alive, the more I still get a sense that God is still there, the same that Zie ever was. I don't know what traditions there are that I could seek God in, what advice to look for, where to go or how to do it. My old sense of things says that prayer and meditation should be enough, but my new sense says otherwise - that was it and was always missing is truly meaningful fellowship. The paradoxical problem is that I both fear and desire that spiritual kinship; for if another is close to me, then they can see my faults and failings and know my generally unorthodox theological convictions. I fear that which I love and love that which I fear, and held in check by overwhelming anxiety, the vertigo of infinite possibility is crippling. Add the angst of general existence that being in your final year at university here brings along with needing to worry about the rest of my life, and I don't have the energy or self belief to fix it.
The rotting spiritual aphorism which I used to go by was 'God will fix it if I have faith and patience enough, in some way.' - but I think my sense of self as a person in and before this was so broken that the external circumstances were never the problem. The fault seems to be an inward one. My basic convictions about spiritual reality need to be confronted, re-aligned and reformed. But I have not the slightest idea of where to begin. Especially when I'm very, very quick to criticise short answers or the trite stock of responses I'm used to (and used to give) as a Christian. 'Just believe' 'Check <this bible verse out>' 'God'll deal with it'. This of course, does render the question why this post exists, if I'm hardened and cynical and hence very difficult to reach. I suppose what I'd ask for is... well... prayer? Someone willing to engage with me? Something involved that can deal with the depth to which these issues go. Or even just perhaps offer directions or alternative avenues of thought which I haven't considered. Anything is helpful, to be honest.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, if you managed it to the end. It's hard to summarise two or three years' worth of spiritual development and thought and feeling into anything which isn't substantitive!
I posted here a bit about 4 years ago, when I was a Christian. A naive, sheltered, white and middle-class Christian. Needless to say, despite a fair grasp of my faith, it wasn't prepared for what a theology degree at Oxford would demand of me. For context: I'm currently 21, in my final year. I was a Christian all my life, raised Baptist / Anglican / Evangelical (Broadly middle-of-the-road Protestant in theological terms. I moved churches a fair amount.) until I came to university when I was 19. I was a Christian there for the first year, then I met my fiance and for the past year and a half have been agnostic.
The challenges of all the presuppositions that I used to hold were easy enough to deal with; questions on socio-historical context of the bible, historicity, hermeneutics and assorted doctrinal and philosophical questions about God as a whole. The faith I thought I knew was gradually unpicked. But, I view that as a healthy process. Rabid conviction in propositions about God is in essence idolatry (Or, if you prefer, a projection of one's subconscious ideologue into the divine sphere; one's existential, idiosyncratic perception of the zeitgeist. Whatever) - to not question such things would have been wrong. I wouldn't trade what I've learnt for anything.
Still, the end-product of this was the shattering of a superficial shell of faith; that is, faith in faith (That is, conviction in statements about God, found in dogmatics and exegetical frameworks etc...) rather than a subjective commitment to union with the divine reality which is relationship with the God. I aimed toward it, but couldn't find it. In addition, I didn't feel that I could have formed especially functional relationships with the other Christians in my college, I became increasingly uncomfortable at churches in Oxford. I joined a couple of societies where I made friends that understood me and didn't seem to judge me or make any assumptions about what constituted 'appropriate' or 'correct' Christian praxis. Such judgment isn't conscious, it isn't malign, but it's there nonetheless - exemplified in the beliefs assumptions that were in that particular group and ran into dissonance when I questioned them or collided with them. In short, we had different priorities and different emphases.
The people I got on with were different. I essentially said 'bugger it' at the end of my first year, and ended up leaving the smouldering wreckage of my socio-spiritual situation which was labelled Christian behind, and wandered around in agnosticism for a fair while. I encountered different political and social ideologies, which made more sense than Christian interpretations. Marx seemed to justly criticise the worst excesses of organised religion. Feminism meted fair judgment on the patriarchal, androcentric and often homophobic nature of Western, mainstream Christianity - despite advances in the modern church. I grew beyond myself and actually became what I hope is an existing, self-aware and engaged individual, whereas before I was in a pre-critical state of intellectual and - I realise now - spiritual paralyzation.
But for all that, I cannot find a way forward from here. Every time I consider the faith I knew, I find myself feeling angry, hurt and sick at all the things that it did to me. My sexuality was infected with guilt which a failed attempt at repression brought about, despite prayer and reading the bible with feverish desparation, day in and day out for 5 years. From that struggle, came a real self-loathing and sense of worthlessness, a feeling of being genuinely filthy. Unclean. Whatever prayer did to mitigate and submerge the feelings, they continually re-emerged. I lived, not really in misery, but in a state of perpetual insecurity and doubt and fear, the echoes of which still persist. But the further I get from it, the more I slowly begin to heal.
Yet for however much I grow, stronger and more alive, the more I still get a sense that God is still there, the same that Zie ever was. I don't know what traditions there are that I could seek God in, what advice to look for, where to go or how to do it. My old sense of things says that prayer and meditation should be enough, but my new sense says otherwise - that was it and was always missing is truly meaningful fellowship. The paradoxical problem is that I both fear and desire that spiritual kinship; for if another is close to me, then they can see my faults and failings and know my generally unorthodox theological convictions. I fear that which I love and love that which I fear, and held in check by overwhelming anxiety, the vertigo of infinite possibility is crippling. Add the angst of general existence that being in your final year at university here brings along with needing to worry about the rest of my life, and I don't have the energy or self belief to fix it.
The rotting spiritual aphorism which I used to go by was 'God will fix it if I have faith and patience enough, in some way.' - but I think my sense of self as a person in and before this was so broken that the external circumstances were never the problem. The fault seems to be an inward one. My basic convictions about spiritual reality need to be confronted, re-aligned and reformed. But I have not the slightest idea of where to begin. Especially when I'm very, very quick to criticise short answers or the trite stock of responses I'm used to (and used to give) as a Christian. 'Just believe' 'Check <this bible verse out>' 'God'll deal with it'. This of course, does render the question why this post exists, if I'm hardened and cynical and hence very difficult to reach. I suppose what I'd ask for is... well... prayer? Someone willing to engage with me? Something involved that can deal with the depth to which these issues go. Or even just perhaps offer directions or alternative avenues of thought which I haven't considered. Anything is helpful, to be honest.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, if you managed it to the end. It's hard to summarise two or three years' worth of spiritual development and thought and feeling into anything which isn't substantitive!
