Seeing the Same Thing Part 6

The previous post on my spiritual journey was about philosophy and thinking deeper about God. I became a serious evangelical at this period of my life, I returned to my roots and filled my life with reading C.S. Lewis and listening to evangelical teachers. At this point in my life my obsessive compulsive disorder hit me full swing, I was working at nights and my disorder kept me from working effectively. At this point I could only produce so much and I knew I was practically useless at work. I was driving with a friend one weekend and had an accident, I totaled my car and took a week vacation just to sort things out with insurance and figure out what I was going to do at this point. It just happened to be Holy Week. I was totally devastated by the car wreck, and pretty much stuck at home. They were showing the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli the whole week, an hour each night for the whole week. I watched segments, and I found myself drawn to the series. It was not that the show was religious, it was that Jesus was so alien to me. I had spent so much time reading the Bible and learning Theology but the Jesus I watched was a stranger. There is a scene in the series where Jesus was eating a fruit (a pomegranate or something else) and reclining while teaching His parables, this was so strange and refreshing to me. I could let down my guard and just relax, like He did. I was drawn to the character of Jesus, He was mesmerizing! I found myself in this story I was watching and I was a pharisee, I was one of His enemies! Something changed deep inside me in this week, I saw the deficiency in my faith and I was determined to change it at all costs. I resolved to "unlearn" the theology I learned from books, I resolved to only read the Gospels for as long as it took to get a better picture of Jesus. I had learned so much from philosophy and Lewis but here was something greater than all that, I would not rest until I was part of this!

So this is probably the last chapter of my spiritual journey, everything else that followed were just footnotes to these events in my life. I slowly overcame my obsessive compulsive 

disorder to the point that I could function normally and actually do a good job. I encountered other writers: Frederick Buechner, G.K. Chesterton, Brennan Manning. The next few years after this period were the best in my life, I did not have much but I had friends who loved me and I was free to be myself. I still live from the steam generated by those days.

Seeing the Same Things Part 5: philosophy

I last left off with my discovery of C.S. Lewis, this was back in the late 1980's and Lewis was not popular. In the current time, Lewis is immensely popular among Evangelical Christians, back then I thought I was the only one reading him. Lewis taught me that it was okay, even holy, to open up my imagination. It was okay to love science fiction, to think and ponder, to dream and know that God is greater than my biggest dreams and pleasures (these dreams and pleasures could actually be God speaking to me). I learned to love literature and argument, at this time I took more Philosophy classes and we were studying the early Greek philosophers, I excelled because I saw hints of what I read from Lewis in their ideas. This was another class where a very tough teacher saw potential in me, I remember her returning my essay saying wistfully that I wrote so well. I was grinning from ear-to-ear, this was probably the greatest compliment I ever received in my life! I felt then that there was hope for me to do something good in the world, that I had found my calling. I was actually good for something!

So a new world opened up before me, the title of these posts say that life for me is a matter of seeing. Lewis reconnected me to the wonder I had as a child, that there could be something more going on behind the scenes of the reality we live through each day. He taught me to look deeper and gave me hope. For this I am eternally grateful.

Seeing the Same Things Part 4

So we left off with my dare to God, which in essence said that I would give God one last chance to convince me that He is or I would abandon my faith once again. I borrowed "Out of the Silent Planet" from the corner library as the last chance. I loved the book, the genre of pulp science fiction was always a favorite of mine so I was at home in this kind of story. What got to me was how Lewis turned every sci-fi cliche on its heels. Instead of space being an dark empty void, it was golden and gorgeous, "the heavens". Instead of bad aliens the aliens were noble and good and innocent. Instead of brave space explorers, it was corrupt humans unable to comprehend the truth in front of them. I never saw it that way before. I saw how foolish our modern assumptions were. The novel ended with a hint that this story may be more than fictional, of course it is all just a story but it rang true to me.

To say the least God won the dare.

Seeing the Same Things Part3

My last post was about my return to faith after a period of atheism, this continues that story. Thinking about it now I gave up my faith not because I doubted, I gave up because I could no longer live that way. It was more of a rejection than an honest doubt. So after this period, I started to consider believing again because of fears, I was alone and could not handle my life by myself. Well, all it took was a slight change in me and good things started to come my way, things that reinforced a different outlook in life, custom-tailored for me. At this junction I quit working and went to college full time. This opened up a new world for me, I was a bad student in my high school years and did not put much effort to my studies. In college I could choose my classes and I savored learning, it was stimulating and I was starting to hone in on what my talents and gifts were. I took a debate class because it was part of my required courses. I realized that I was naturally inclined towards Logic and argument. Part of this class was staging debates with fellow students, I took part in one debate and used my old fundamentalist preacher style talent of public speaking. I really impressed my teacher, I remember he asked me to join the debate team, it was amazing! So debate involves defending ideas, part of this is defending both sides of an issue. During this time I was starting to stray from God again, things were going well and I thought that I should apply the principles of logic to evaluating my faith. After all, fear was what caused me to return to faith. I came to a point where I said to myself that I would give God one last chance to convince me about Him, I was ready to abandon it all again for intellectual reasons this time (as opposed to emotional ones when I first rejected faith) and I gave Him a chance to "convince" me. I remembered seeing something odd in a Christian bookstore many years ago, science fiction novels. In the moral majority influenced Christian culture of the 80's science fiction and Christianity did not mix so seeing this book intrigued me. I went to our corner public library and found one of those books, it was "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis. Little did I know that God was answering my challenge, and that He would answer it in a big way..