The God-bothering bit

I can't set up a blogging site without reference to my faith.  

I counted God as a close friend until I was six when someone overheard me chatting to him in the loo.  Ten minutes of ridicule later, I stopped talking to him for 20 years.  I still believed in his existence, I learned my Bible well at School, but in my teens concluded two things: (1) God did not want to talk to me and (2) it was better that way as I didn't want to become a Nun, talk in tongues or be sent to some hot and dusty place to spread the word.  I focussed on enjoying life as hedonistically as I had the confidence to do.  As for church, I discovered that now and then I'd really feel the need to go and when I did I actually felt - something, I didn't know what.  So that was what I did.

As my mid-20s passed without seeing me wed or bred, I began to wonder about life.  My Dad asked if I would like to try the Alpha course, which goes through the basics of Christianity.  With the big three-oh closer ahead of me than 20 was behind me, I figured it was about time I decided if I really believed all this God-stuff or not.  I went along, expecting to come out of the other side with my church days behind me.  I certainly was not going to make any friends among the God-botherers and Jesus freaks .  But God had other ideas.  For the first time in 20 years, I heard him speak clearly, and in a moment when I knew I had an absolute free choice to say 'yes' or 'no', my heart fell on the side of the compulsion to say 'yes'.  Friends, I became a God-botherer and Jesus-freak.

I can only describe it as having firm ground under my feet again after years of trying to walk across a bog.  I had thought my former life so free, but now I felt a sense of liberty that took my breath away.  I had been living in dank, dark cave and now I was standing on the edge of the known world with the wind and the sun and the sea.  The journey since has seen joys and dark times, and more of both lie ahead, I know, but I also know this is my choice: to go through them with God or without.  I know which I prefer.

If you've read this far you might be wondering about my theology.  I was birthed in evangelical Christianity, and like many new Christians I embraced the black and white certainties of my new faith.  The years since have taken me into the greys that form most of human life.  I thank God for the black and white at the heart of my faith community, but before his otherness, I have choose to err on the side of grace instead of the side of judgement.  Come one, come all, just be loved.