House of Cards

Oh, God!

All these doubting people…clutching at air for something to hold on to.

How can I say with certainty that I have found the Truth?

The Bible questioned. Demands for our lives to follow exactly the life of Jesus, in law and letter. The desire, found everywhere in the modern world, to help people…the wisdom, truth, and beauty often to be found there. The hope and then the fact, the shattering reason and evidence that should unravel all we think we know…

The half-baked faith of intellectuals. They tweak this or that, diminish this or that, remove whole chunks of doctrine and belief…perch unsteadily on the remains of what is left.

But surely our faith can’t be like a house of cards? Pull one of the cards from the middle or bottom of the stack, and everything topples and crashes?

We Christians have our half-baked truths…trotted out in simplistic, partially-researched style. (Mostly in the work of other Christians or gathered from the Internet.)

Everybody has an answer; everybody has an opinion. The life you live is what matters most; the life you live matters nothing at all.

Some clutch their doctrine in an iron fist; others let their beliefs fly like seeds on the wind, letting them grow where they fall, not trying to control them.

I feel like all of these are not quite right. But who am I to say such a thing? I am a proud, broken, pathetic being. Who am I to speak? Is following Jesus just an extra burden to weigh down an already leaden-footed life?

Some seem willing to stand on a patch of soil, plant their seeds and entangle themselves with the tree that grows there—rigid, unmovable, secure.

I’d prefer to dance.

The world is too much with us. We think too much about it, and it makes us unable to see what we really want and what really matters most. 

But I’m familiar with this dark world—oh, too familiar by far. I know the darkness and confusion, the tangled web that winds itself around you and slowly squeezes out all of the air in your lungs…

It is a world where the foremost chorus is: I am. I am my own. I will choose. I will decide.

I, I, I.

The roads we walk are infinite, but they all lead back to “I,” to “me.”

But I have discovered a different world. A reality too good to be told. Where “I” gets lost, and found again.

It is a dancing world, and its foremost chorus is: Love.

Love is a Person—Father, Son, and Spirit.