Wonderland and God

I’ve had a lot of friends confused or frustrated with their relationship to or with God. I’ve heard of a couple of guys lately who have just decided they don’t believe anymore and it’s a shock because sometimes I forget that that happens. It’s wierd to think that in a year I will be entering “the real world” again where your friends and elders no longer care about your spiritual health.

One thing that isn’t any different here than in the real world is people’s expectations of anyone in ministry. We will forever be held to impossibly high standards; the same standards that all Christians are held to. Everytime I hear that thrown in my face I have trouble not thinking, “if you were behaving the way you should as a Christian, people like me wouldn’t have this major and there would be no need for my profession.” The real kicker is when other majors bash the Youth Ministry Major. Don’t these people see how stupid they are when they say things about how lazy youth ministers are? I promise, if the Youth Ministers are lazy for babysitting and tending to your child both physically and spiritually, what does that make the parent who leaves those things up to the lazy stranger?

My major isn’t easy. I’m expected to write 15 page papers in majority of my classes and learn Greek. I believe my department is the only one that handles cheating by reminding you frequently that Hell was made for people like that. When a nursing major goes to class their perspective on health is changed. They never toush stair rails again. When I go to class I’m asked to wrestle with the divine counsel, predestination, the fact that the historicity of most books is lacking and seemingly less can be taken literally. I go home each night trying to reconcile my class with my beliefs on God and then I’m expected to show up the next day able to answer those questions for some random person I’ve yet to meet who my professors promise I will meet someday.

My friends ask me questions. What about Calvinism? Armenianism? life? I don’t know. I just don’t have any answers. Is this what God wanted when he handed down his word? For it to be a giant labyrinth? I believe he wants us to seek him like he seeks us, but to read the Bible like this? What ever happened to the Spirit? We haven’t even learned to accept grace, and we’re supposed to try to crawl into God’s mind and package it for the rest of the world?

The wisdom of God is important. I’m not advocating abandoning that pursuit. But sometimes I think my worldview is so different from the people asking the questions that I can’t answer them. There was a water ride at Wonderland Park that had two big tubes that twisted between eachother. You rode down them into a pool of water on an intertube. I was terrified of the water at the bottom but my Uncle Tim and I would ride it together. Tim would sit in the back and “steer” trying to make our tube go as high up the sides as he could. I was barely handling clinging to his legs. I could never have steered and when it reached the bottom I’m hold on as tight as I could and closed my eyes. For the most part that’s how I feel about life. It goes by so fast with new challenges hitting you so quickly that sometimes, at best all we can do is hold on tight to someone who has more control over things than we do. I can believe and love and serve, but I’m not God. I don’t have all the answers.

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