Faith and its Loneliness

Call my perspective unhealthy. Call it unstable. Call it counter-productive. Believing in things that are not seen is borderline depressing. I would argue that if you do not engage with the depression and bitter disappointment that you encounter when dealing with faith, then what you are practicing may not be faith at all.

The problem with us faith based irrational creatures, is that we deem it more righteous to be optimistic. Optimism is a human shell that people wear, that has the potential of covering the most doubt-filled creature deep within. We struggle with the expression of our faith. We are not sure how to appear faithful in the midst of complete and utter frustration. We still believe that the capacity to have faith is a function of our own doing - of our own righteousness.

Many of you read this blog. In fact, many of you read this blog in secret. You pretend like you don't know what is going on in my life, but you are very curious. You read this like it was the morning newspaper. There is nothing wrong with this. I want you to read this - it is my deepest joy that a faithless person like me can offer anything good to you in the first place. It is in good faith that you actually read this blog. Your curiosity strikes a desire to see if my inner musings, creativity, and "faith," can benefit your life in some way.

In good faith, you engage in my world. In good faith, I write these words down. Both of us, on either side of the computer - on either sides of the world - on either sides of the religious and social tightrope - on either sides of cultural upbringings - both of us - in some measure of faith - engage with each other. I never know what I am really sowing. Everyday I roam this earth, not fully knowing who I am affecting, who is affecting me, and who I will truly end up being. You are in the same predicament. You are desperately seeking a destiny. Desperately seeking love. Desperately seeking security under the most insecure of playgrounds. We are both lonely in our faith journey, but through something as insignificant as a blog post, we meet each other.

The loneliness of our faith leads to something very precious. I, not knowing who is reading this, can potentially change the trajectory of your world view - or even drop a sprinkle of a word that takes form in your soul. There is power in being alone in your faith. There is power in interacting with the evils of this world in the body of a lonely human being. You have to experience the depths of this loneliness, so that when a breakthrough happens, there is no more looking back. The past isn't a frame of reference to your present and future when you have dealt with faith - on the edge of a cliff - not knowing what happens when you take the next step. If you are a person interested in God, you should seek God's faihfulness in and through you, and not your powers of positive thinking. If you want to be a person of complete faith, you have to know what it's like to weep continuously because everything you believed in could just as well be all bogus. It could all be one elaborate joke.

So today - to my lonely reader - to my lonely brother or sister that walks so alone in their faith journey. We might not know each other. We might know each other very well. But behind this computer screen, we remain anonymous and alone. I have faith that you will overcome. I have faith that you will fight stronger. I have faith that your enemies will crumble at your feet. I have faith that my faith doesn't come from within - it comes from the other side. Because when you know how faithless I am, you will know what faith in its rawest form can become. Peace, and much love to you - John Baptist.

Comments

  1. that's one of the most honest things ive read in a while. thank you for this because there's really no framework for walking in the dark aside from faith. And there are even fewer people who write, speak, or sing about it!

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