It's been bubbling within me for quite a while now, I think I just gotta vent tonight.
My international studies lecturer is someone I greatly respect and admire, if not for the fact that he's a great teacher and always tries to be objective, then for the fact that he's incredibly smart (how the heck does one even achieve that level of intellect and wide-ranging global knowledge?!)
But he's very openly critical of the church, specifically the evangelicals. Who can blame him, if you look at the way faith is exploited in the USA to garner political support for the right-wingers, and if you consider the way the state has been controlled by the church in early modern times. And if you explore the host of other issues with the church that crop up in the media these days.
To be honest, if I wasn't a Christian and I was on the outside looking in, I would be very very critical of all these "happy-clappers" as Glenn likes to term me, irking me to no end.
And whenever this discourse takes place in class - well actually, thank God there never really is a discourse. It's always him giving his two-cents worth about the "evangelical agenda" - I sit in silence and try to gather my thoughts to come up with a coherent argument.
But I stumble short.
Because I know Christianity is based on faith. How do you explain in rational, cognitive terms something as inherently intangible and illogical as faith? How do you make a coherent argument about God's love without sounding like a wuss who's just walked out of the theater after watching A Walk to Remember, subsequently romanticizing everything in the way? How do you explain something supernatural which is so fundamentally a deep gut feeling without sounding, for lack of a better word, stupid? How do you defend the politicizing of "religion", which we know is NOT true Christianity, to benefit a small group of elites?
With everything that's portrayed in the media, I know that if I didn't know Christ for myself, I would be as openly critical as him about us. It is extremely frustrating, because my faith is something so personal and so divine that it completely defies logic and reason. The only way people could understand and believe it is if they have a supernatural encounter of their own. And by supernatural, I don't mean a lightning zap from heaven a la Paul who was struck blind. I just mean an encounter, an experience, a small act of kindness, that will, if not open their eyes to the truth all at once, then at least open the gateway to their heart into discovering more of the richness of being a follower of Christ. At the end of the day, everyone wants to know the truth. Everyone who gives a damn at all would go about trying to grasp the concept of religion. But therein lies the problem. Christianity is not based on works and acts and one man's teachings. You can't grasp the concept. You have to experience it for yourself. The love, the grace, the undeserved mercy. So incredibly hippie if I didn't know better. How do you convince people of that?
I think about this issue a lot, not because I'm extremely offended by D's insensitive attacks against my "religion" (I'm not!), but because I'm trying to form a logical argument from an intellectual perspective, and I come up short. Partly because faith defies logic, mostly because I'm not well-read enough.
I can only ask God to grant me wisdom, and to grant him an encounter that will radically change his life.
