Apathetic

I fear becoming apathetic. This would be the death knell for me.

I was taught that you are always either moving forwards or backwards. There was no standing still or being a lukewarm Christian. Grey is not the domain you live in, things are more black and white. You are known to others by the “good fruit” you display and this is how there is reassurance that you are on the right path.

If I’m honest, I think this is something I’m going to have to let go. I’ve wrestled on and off for the last 15 years on what I believe and whether I’m a Christian. A big part of this started way before I left when a Pastor thought it was good to instill the idea that you can never truly know if you are saved and planted seeds of doubt.

I’m tired. While in some ways I’ve made steps forward, the overall theme is still very much the same as it has been, or maybe its even regressed. I don’t have answers and I think for now only death will tell where I land. Before that would have terrified me, but for now that is the only answer I have and one that I guess I’ve become okay with, which is a step.

Can you be a Christian if you aren’t sure that you believe you should be going out into the world to be a “fisher of men”? Isn’t that the purpose? What if you’ve been so overdosed on the cross that you can’t even look at it and when you do, you border on ambivalent to apathetic? What if not having the answer to these two things means that one of the last tethers you had in your life dropped, and now you’re left free floating.

There are guides that could be used to assist in digging through quagmire yet the problem is, when well versed against the opponent, you know how to be a chameleon and blend into what is needed. I should be reading and interpreting the source myself, potentially reading other scholars to get differing opinions to assist in shaping my own conclusions or talking to others that understand this type of trauma. Yet after all this time, it’s still difficult to look at the source, I fear reviewing what scholars say will just be pushing their bent anyway which often also deals with whatever is going on politically and counseling sets up its own tricky issues.

I hadn’t realized how the last routine I had left was such a strong force in keeping me from just being.

In some ways, I feel like I should apologize (staple me) for being such a downer or statistic. I wish I could say, I was one of those who finally has come out and made my way back, but I think honesty gets you further, even if it isn’t the kind we wanted.