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As Arnie might say… “I’ll be back.”

This year I’ve tried reading the Bible, but to say I have found it hard going would be a an understatement. I feel like a teenager reading Shakespeare for a class they don’t enjoy. The language is hard, the context is harder, and for me the whole experience is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist.

One problem I have is that despite the fact I enjoy writing, I have never particularly enjoyed reading. I read dreadfully slowly and struggle to remember anything from the pages of a book. A paperback that might take you just a few evenings to breeze through could likely take me many weeks to complete. I often re-read chapters I have already read, sometimes because I need to remind myself of where I was up to, but often because I simply don’t realise I have already read the chapter until some key element reminds me.

In my adult life I am embarrassed to admit that I have read no more than five books from cover to cover. In truth I just don’t find the process of reading books an enjoyable and rewarding way to spend my time.

Another problem is that the Bible isn’t exactly a book you can just pick up and read. It’s not supposed to be fiction, but at the same time there’s a things in it that are hard to accept as fact. If you start in Genesis and just read you quickly become bogged down in some, if I may be blunt, really boring genealogical lifeless blurge which surely could sap the enthusiasm of even the most fervent Bible reader.

“In order to understand the old testament you need learn about it’s context.” One Christian told me. But wait a second, I need to read a book and become a quasi-expert on middle eastern history and culture before I can understand the Bible?

When I picked up Douglas Coupland’s ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ I didn’t have to read another book to put the characters and places into context. I simply picked up the book and started reading it, the characters, scenes and essential background information quickly became apparent.

Another Christian told me to “ignore the old testament.” Ignore it? Hang on a second, the old testament makes up a significantly large and weighty part of my Bible. If it were simply meant to be ignored then why include it in the first place? Am I to understand that the old testament is something akin to your appendix?

I have a copy of ‘The Message,’ it’s a new testament Bible written in contemporary English. I’m going to try and read that, but what if that similarly doesn’t grab me? Is reading the Bible more like reading an instruction manual or unwieldy user guide? Right now you’re reading the words of a guy who tries to build Ikea furniture with only the briefest look at the simple instructions, so if the Bible is just a manual then I think maybe someone needs to bring out the Ikea illustrated version complete with pictures, numbered items, and left over screws!

I’ll give ‘The Message’ a try. I’ll say a prayer before I read it. It won’t be some big wordy ‘thee’s, thou’s and thy’s’ kind of prayer, just a quick word. “Hey God, you chose terrible authors for your biogrophy, if any book needs a miracle then I think it’s yours!” Maybe I won’t say exactly that, I might just skip to the miracle bit, what do you think? Perhaps if you believe in God you could say a prayer for me too.

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Jesus died for my sins. That was nice of him, but I am not sure I can understand why. I mean, to me that doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Jesus is God, and he is also God’s son. He came to earth to hang out with the nice folk in the middle east, and they killed him in the most awful way, but he was okay with that because he did that to save me? But hang on, what was he saving me from? God’s judgement? He is God though, so if he wanted to save me why not just not go through all the bother of getting nailed to a cross. Maybe I’ll again be accused of blasphemy when I ask this, but wasn’t that all just pointless theatrics?

Maybe I think too much. Maybe I just need to unplug my brain for a while and accept that there is some stuff I can’t get my head around. Like I don’t understand why suicide bombers strap explosives to themselves and detonate them on buses full of people they’ve never met. I don’t understand a lot of things that I willingly accept, like drugs, electricity, and sleep (and I like sleep!). Why don’t I ever question those things as much as I question God? What is it that motivates me to at least try and make some sense of God?

It’s not that I want to completely understand God. I’m not that arrogant! But we talk about God in relational terms, frequently using words like ‘father,’ ‘child,’ and ‘love.’ I like to at least try and understand those people in my life who I have, or seek, a relationship with. So surely it’s not unreasonable of me to want to try and understand God?

When I look out at a sunset I see God. I’m a creative person so it’s not hard for me to see God in his creation, to lose myself in the wonder of all that beauty; the magic of a leaf and its ability to photosynthesize, the delicate dance of a sea horse, or the near mystical power of the endless stars that put my size into context. These things I understand, if only in an abstract way. But to me these things seem separate to the religious works of man and God.

So Jesus died for my sins. Thanks Jesus. But dude, couldn’t you have just not created the serpent in the Garden of Eden in the first place, I mean surely that would have saved the both of us a whole lot of trouble, right? It’s not like you didn’t know how things would turn out!

A nice church person once told me “You’re too proud to be a Christian.” I’m sure what they actually meant to say was “How can I help show you the love of the Lord my dear friend?” and it just came out wrong. But really, at the risk of sounding proud, I think they were wrong. You see, I just struggle with the process of abandoning questions in favor of blind belief.

Belief without question, without intellectual inquiry and soul searching, leads to the kind of mindset that makes a person feel that it’s entirely reasonable to strap explosives to themselves and detonate them on a bus full of people they’ve never met. Granted, most blind believers never get to that place, but it is surely a dangerous road to be on in any case.

If God wanted us to all be as dumb as bricks, I think he would have made us bricks. He gave us brains and the power to question, the power to reason, the power to evolve our thinking. To unplug the basic functionality of our minds surely does God a disservice, it says “Thanks for the brain God, but I think maybe I’m better if I don’t use it, I think maybe you made a mistake in giving it to me.”

I can’t just accept something that I can’t resolve in some way. I accept suicide bombers because they’re nuts and there is nothing I can do to stop them. I accept drugs because they make me better and they’re backed up by clever people doing clever research. I accept electricity because I can see that it makes stuff work, and I accept sleep because I am a cranky pain in the ass without it. To some degree all those things resolve in some way, even if the resolution is somewhat open-ended and expandable. So Jesus, God himself, dying on the cross for my sins when he already possessed the power to forgive me of those sins in any case, I don’t get that.

To be clear, it’s not that I don’t believe, it’s simply that I don’t understand the religious aspects of God. So while the faithful church goers break bread this Sunday I’ll probably be at the beach watching the sunset, awestruck by the wonder of God because I can, to some degree, understand that much of him.

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I was criticized by a friend recently for not being more open and honest on this blog. She told me that, while interesting, the two previous posts read more like articles than the writings of someone who was trying to confront the most searching questions of God and faith.

At first I was a little disappointed at her appraisal because I had written both those posts hoping to engage readers, genuinely interested in their responses and how those responses might steer my thoughts. But I see what she meant. Neither post was written in a delving personal way that revealed anything of my search. They scratched the surface, but they didn’t particularly bleed truth.

The problem is that truth is hard. I’m writing this from where I am in life, and where I am feels further away from God than ever before. My belief hasn’t swayed but my understanding and my faith are in tatters and I’m not entirely comfortable revealing that I feel the question of God is now more murky for me than ever before.

In a little while, as it’s Sunday and I feel like I should make some kind of proactive stride in ‘God’s direction,’ I am going to attempt to go to church. I did a little research yesterday on what church I could go to, but even that process left me feeling somewhat bewildered and confused. I don’t understand the different denominations and how they relate to me. As an average non-church person I’m puzzled as to what all these different versions of the same thing mean and how they differ from one another.

To be honest, the prospect of even walking through the doors of a church is daunting to me; no it’s more than that, it’s terrifying. I’ve had terrible experiences at three different churches in the past and I’m currently thought of as some kind of relation to Satan by one small group of misguided happy clappers, many of whom have never actually met me or spoken to me!

Sadly, in my experience church people are among the most intolerant judgmental and impatient people I’ve ever met. They delight in your questions for a short while, but soon tire of you if you don’t quickly sit the fuck down and shut up with all your damn stupid questions. They come off as arrogant know-it-all’s who think they have the answer for everything, and if you don’t hurry up and get with the program then they would sooner you just took your doubt some place else thank you very much.

For me churches feel like clubhouses for the converted. They’re not welcoming, they’re not warm, and they’re not safe. They are by their very nature buildings full of religious people and that’s a problem when you’re someone who has an inherent distrust of religious people!

Walking into that kind of environment is about the single most uncomfortable thing you could ask me to do, yet ‘churchy folk’ just don’t seem to be able to get that through their thick heads. Asking me to come an sing songs to God then listen to some boring suit drone on for way too long while I sit on an uncomfortable chair is not the way to engage me. Sadly though, this seems to be the only way that Christians have to relate to me and the rest of the world. “Come to my church.” “My church is different.” “My church is friendly.” “You’ll like my church, the people are great.” – NO PEOPLE, I WON’T! DON’T YOU GET IT?!

The problem is that no, they don’t get it. For the religious people out there (and yes I appreciate many dislike the term ‘religious,’ but you are what you are) church is great. It’s their community, their safe haven, somewhere they like to go because it’s where they get to hang out with like minded people who all feel comfortable closing their eyes when they pray, wobbling their hands while they sing, or speaking in gobbledegook that is supposedly the language of angels or something?

For someone who isn’t used to this environment the whole thing seems a bit strange and not entirely comfortable. Jesus went out into the world and spoke with fishermen, hookers, and the everyday people on the street. I’m no expert, but I don’t think he went to church that often and one of the few times that I can recall he did was when he smashed the place up!

Jesus was controversial, outspoken, not religious, and unpopular with the church leaders of the day. I think I would get along with a guy like that.

So yeah, I don’t like church. You probably get that by now. But what else am I supposed to do? I believe in God but I want to take that belief and turn it into something more visceral, more real, something that I guess would qualify as a real faith. Honestly, as much as I am repelled by religious people who put their lives into the hands of an unseen God, I envy their ability to do so. I wish that I had the faith to be so fantastically brave. So as much as I despise and deplore the experience of stepping into a church and standing among people who have time and again rejected me, I’m going to try and do it again.

It’s Sunday evening and I’m going to church.

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So how did it go? Click here to find out.

The other day I was talking to someone about a recent event in my life that I thought was perhaps a sign, and maybe even a sign from God. I’d found something on a beach that seemed to clearly communicate a course of action to me. It had to be a sign, I thought to myself, and encouraged by this I embarked on a course of action.

It wasn’t until I was talking to my friend when they suggested that rather than the item being a sign, it might just have been a random happenstance around which I created the ’sign’ telling me to do simply what my heart desired.

I’ll admit that I felt somewhat deflated by this interpretation of my ’sign.’ But looking at it from a stone cold sober and logical perspective, I could see that there were indeed a number of ways I could have otherwise interpreted the ’sign’ or ignored it all together. I was at the time caught up in the emotion of the moment and therefore was highly suggestible to such ’signs’ and guidance.

This got me to thinking about the question of ’signs and wonders’ sought out and revered by religious people who believe that God ‘talks’ to mankind in this way. The Bible is full of signs from God, all of which are far more pronounced than the random playing card I found on a deserted beach!

It seems to me that in recent times God hasn’t quite lived up to his former glory days when he empowered Moses to part the red sea, or had Jesus feed the 5000 with only enough food for a few men. These days, it would seem that we look for signs and wonders that are often times ambiguous, and sometimes just downright suspect.

If God understands that mankind is imperfect and willful, then how come he is willing to leave the fate of our eternal soul to such precarious devices? We’re constantly bombarded from all sides with information and misinformation. The world is more connected now than at any other point in history. So wouldn’t it be more helpful if the almighty could perhaps speak up a little?

Looking at my ’sign’ from clinical and purely scientific perspective I would have to conclude that I was merely searching to find confirmation of what I wanted to believe. In essence it was no different to the masses of religious people the world over who have seen the Virgin Mary appear in all manner of strange places, or the way in which most of us can pick out a face on the surface of the moon. But then if this is the case, then how is one supposed to hear from God if his preferred method of communication is so perilously prone to failure?

If you pray then wait upon God to ’speak’ to you, how do you know if what you ‘hear’ is actually from God, and not simply from your subconscious?

Some people have told me that they actually hear the voice of God in their heads, audible and clear speaking beyond any doubt or uncertainty. But if this is the case, then how come God doesn’t speak as clearly to everyone who speaks to him? Should I be concerned that I’m not hearing God’s actual voice, or should I be more concerned about the people who are?

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Maybe it begins the moment you start talking to God. “Hello God, it’s me, Simon.” But then what? Other forms of communication lend themselves to clear responses, conversations, and conclusions. But speaking to God seems far more ambiguous than that. We talk, he listens, or so we hope. But does he?

What’s the difference between talking to God and just talking to yourself?

I can’t email God or send him a text. He doesn’t have a mailing address or a toll free number to call. He’s not on Skype or IM and not even Google can find him. As connected as we are these days, it seems that we might be more disconnected from God now than ever before.

So really, I’m interested… How do you speak to God?

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I started this blog in order to find God. The somewhat irreverent title was meant in jest, and also to perhaps make those holier-than-thou types feel a little uncomfortable in their seats or pews. But more than that, it was a genuine expression of my searching heart – I mean really, who the hell is God?

The journey

I planned to visit churches, mosques, temples, synagogs, and all manner of other places in an honest and truthful journey of discovery with the expectation of finding the answer to my question. The prospect of the places I would go and the people I might meet excited me.

This was to be be a journey that would surely open my eyes, my mind, and my heart. I felt sure that along the way, as I learned and experienced new things, I would most certainly change as my outlook and expectations were perhaps shaped by the encounters of such an exploration.

Nearly a year later the blog is still effectively empty, my plans as yet unfulfilled, and my question behind this grand idea still unanswered and largely unexplored like a great mountain that has yet to be climbed.

So what happened?

I got scared: There, I wrote it, it’s out there now in shameful black and white honesty, naked as the truth and as difficult as a confession. You see I can’t deny that vulnerability is not one of my strong points, and that I had underestimated just how hard it would be to even make the first steps of this journey that I absolutely want to make.

I found myself bound and gagged by my absolute fear and loathing of religion and the prospect that the road to enlightenment is beset on all sides by distractions and shortcuts that instead lead to the closed minded judgmentalism of religion with all its vile and repulsive entrapments.

For the sake of disclosure it seems only fair that I should tell you that I have had experiences with Christians and churches, few of which have been positive. Those experiences have often been embroiled in a certain degree of controversy that is perhaps born out of my unwillingness to simply go through the motions. If I had closed my eyes, shut my mouth, and waved my hands in the air when everyone else did I probably would have had an easier ride.

Thus far I’ve been “disfellowshipped” from a Pentacostal church, unceremoniously shunned by another, and even forcibly ejected from a London based Christian sect who didn’t appreciate my line of questioning. In short it’s fair to say that my mainstream religious endeavors have all ended badly, and most of the time they’ve ended very badly indeed.

So why bother?

Because I still believe. Because I still cannot look at a Jellyfish, or the stars above, or the intricate veins of a leaf, and think that this was all just some act of random physics. Because humankind has sought and found different ‘God’s’ throughout time, building great shrines and temples to powers and forces beyond our comprehension and the limitations of our own experiences and imagination. Because there is an element to life that science cannot answer, and we alone cannot satisfy. Because of all the journeys and great explorations mankind could ever embark on, this one, this very one must surely be the boldest.

That said, here I am, standing still.

So what now?

I don’t know. I’ll be honest with you, whoever you are, I’m at a loss as to know what to do. My repulsion for religion has merely hardened now, and the distance I feel from knowing or coming to terms with any kind of God now seems further and more pronounced than ever before.

I’ve prayed and searched for signs, but it just feels like I’m adrift, like a sailor using the stars to navigate on a cloudy night. I feel like I’ve been sending out an S.O.S to God for years, but he’s not tuned into my frequency and I can’t find his.

I don’t want to over intellectualize my search, but at the same time I don’t want to unplug my brain either. I want to be humble but I don’t want to dumbly follow the words of another just because they ‘know’ more than me. I want to be bold but I don’t want to be foolish.

People have told me that there could be dangers inherent in any such search as this. Some truly awful things have been done in the name of God and I’m not beyond the danger of getting swept along on a wave of excitement or emotion. So with that in mind I want to be able to know when to let the wave carry me and when not to.

I want to be understood, not handled with suspicion and distrust. I don’t want people to see my questions as attacks, my words as weapons, or my doubt as defeat. I want to be engaged and engage others, to use my mind and follow heart. Maybe I don’t tick the standard boxes or fit into the molds with which people are comfortable, but that doesn’t make my desire to find or be found by God any less valid or real.

I want to share this journey. This is part of who I am, my longing for answers, for peace, and for purpose has always been a journey I’ve wanted to share. That’s why I’m writing, because I want someone to come with me, and after all the disappointment it might as well be you, right?

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