on doubt

double post.

It makes me wonder, you know. How vastly different this experience is for a lot of people. When I read people's testimonies, especially the ones that go on about how much God was working here and there, there's a part of me that wonders how real it is. Like, I guess it'd be nice if it were true, but is it, fully, entirely, really?

I guess you could extrapolate that to most of what we talk about in Christianity in general. In some ways I feel like my heart's been hardened (Christianese, I know... can't think of a better way to put it >_>) to a lot of the stuff that get said here over time. You have to approach it with a certain mindset that's willing to accept the things that people say and believe at face value, in spite of the fact that people tend to be known for embellishing the truth or exaggerating when the situation fits it, or even lying to themselves. Maybe because I've been feeling self-conscious of all the times I've been guilty and done the same myself, and wondering, if I could do it that easily, what's not to say that other people haven't been doing it too?

I still don't know where I stand on a lot of this. I'm somewhere in-between, half-wanting to believe but still second-guessing a lot of what I see. Couldn't it all just be just convenient coincidences? And if you answer with the usual - faith, trust in God - why? Why does God value it so much?

Sometimes I feel like the main reason I still stick around is because I can't shake this feeling, inside somewhere, that this is real, against my other senses. I still can't bring myself to fully trust God and go much further than that, which is why I still feel somewhat like an outsider whenever I am around. Why I feel more at home when I'm outside the room than when I'm in. Why I feel so resistant to fully committing to a church, to worship, to a particular theology, to a denomination, to a belief system, to anything in general.

The more I read, the more I learn, the more perspectives I see, the more I find myself distancing from what I believed and thought I knew, to the point where I just throw my hands up and am just left with a bunch of unanswered questions. Sometimes I feel like that's what this life is, or what God intended it to be. Just a bunch of unanswered questions.

I admire people who are much stronger than me in what they believe and have the courage to say and do something good and meaningful about it. I don't feel anywhere close to being at that point right now, in spite of what others might have told me in the past - and I've been mostly silent on this for a while. I think I've grown too accustomed to being paralyzed and indecisive, and leaving the choices out there for another day... like all of the other big decisions in life. Procrastinating on God himself.

I should start taking some real risks for once, though, and not just mope about everyday looking for the next big entertaining distraction to come along. Distractions can only turn away attention from the sickness, from the emptiness for a while, while it continues to grow and fester inside. And honestly, every so often when the distraction is gone, especially when I'm at church and have trouble paying attention (because the sermon doesn't always flow in a way that my mind can follow), I can feel it.

A slow, dull, deadening inside.

I think I'm overdue for a new journal.