The second time around...

I've been here before.

How's that for a beginning, stranger?

When I say I've been here before I'm not meaning physical location or situation. I don't mean it in the way that someone in an unfamiliar area might look around and conclude that they are lost, "I've been here before, and I've seen that rock, we're going in circles!” I mean that I've been here before because despite many outward signs that would suggest otherwise, I don't think I ever left this spot once I found it.

Where is here? To me, "here" is being able to not just ask but accept my own answers to the questions that I've asked myself since I was twelve. Someone growing up in a true believing conservative Christian fundamentalist household normally would invoke the image of strict control with lots of rules and harsh punishments for failure to follow, yet for me it was actually quite the opposite. In my home curiosity was encouraged, rules were there for practical reasons that generally made sense, and punishments were generally mild and always warranted. That is except for the one question and the ones that follow that I began to ask at twelve shortly after my baptism, the question that brought me here. What if we are wrong and other people are right?

When posed to my father at that age the response was a harsh, "Don't even think about that!". Being the obedient and awe-inspired (I still am to this day) son, I did my best to do just that. The problem is I just am not capable of holding back questions and honestly the sheer probabilities against us being "right" were too daunting to not address. My response was to seek rejection of the doubt through studying what those that had already rejected the doubt said. Being a poor book learner, I sought out those in my school and Church who were both smart and devout and drew them into discussions about faith. I took their conviction and bolstered my own. When the subtle whispers in the back of my mind caused that conviction to waiver, my deep emotional love for the person of Jesus drove me to the front of the Church to proclaim and encourage others. The rush of conviction that came from the confirmation that I had a gift for preaching and teaching was enough to put down doubt for a long time, after all it would be a crime to waste such a gift.

The problem as I discovered it is that "Paul" was wrong. I'm not sure if it's that love does in fact fail or if it's that perfect love does not in fact exist, but I do know that no matter how much you might love a person in a story if that story doesn't make sense then the love isn't real. At some point in my journey I realized I didn't love Jesus so much as the idea of Jesus and that I didn't love God so much as I loved the idea of God. I realized that I had no foundation left at the bottom of my tower of faith and given just the right kind of shove it would topple over. *shove*

Being the kind of person I am, I sat in the ruins of my tower for a long time hating it and everything it used to stand for. Then, being the kind of person I am and having some very positive outside influences, I began to build my tower anew. This time I used a foundation I could trust. I built it on the foundation of the faith of my wife and soon it had grown to come close to where it had been before. I still had all the questions and doubts, but now I could look to the bedrock of my life and get reassurance. What I didn't know was that my wife was building her tower on MY foundation.

When she started asking her questions to me and I realized that I couldn't give her the answers that would reinforce her faith without lying to her I was afraid. I saw a repeat of what happened before, only this time it would catch both of us and likely our kids. Then my wife proved to me the wisdom I had in marrying her, instead of waiting for the shove to come she instead began the slow, painful process of tearing down together bit by bit the tower we had built and then when we found we were at the ground we began the process of really truly answering for ourselves the questions that had been on our minds for so long.

I'd like to share some of that with you, I think. At least while I'm here. Like I said, I've been here before.

I just don't intend to stay.