A Crisis of Faith

The clock reads 1:25am… I should be asleep, yet sleep is not to be found. I close my eyes, and I see only my fail­ure — nay, my abuse — of faith. I see my own self­ish­ness, greed, apa­thy, and dis­con­nect­ed­ness from those who are in need.

I see my focus on doc­tri­nal truth, a focus which is in and of itself fine, yet has ulti­mately come at the cost of infect­ing my area of the world with God’s Kingdom.

And I see just how infected I have become with the world. Rather than salt­ing the world, spread­ing through it like leaven or mus­tard plants, the world has instead salted me… poi­soned me.

I get more excited about toys from my child­hood get­ting remade into Hollywood block­busters than I do hear­ing about — much less par­tic­i­pat­ing in — holy sub­ver­sion of this world’s empires.

I get more into the lat­est, great­est video games than I ever have shar­ing even the doc­tri­nal truth which I have striven so hard to per­fect — and I still have yet so far to go.

And per­haps most dis­turb­ing at all is that I will take just about any oppor­tu­nity to defend my views con­cern­ing Genesis 6 or Jesus’ encounter with the Legion-​​possessed demo­niac… but when pre­sented with oppor­tu­ni­ties to sac­ri­fi­cially love or to sub­vert the world’s empires or economies, how often do I turn away? Oh, there’s sub­ver­sion going on, but it’s sub­ver­sion of my own faith: when I turn the other cheek, it isn’t because some­one has struck me, it’s because I do not wish to see what has been placed before me.

I’m not for sure if what I’m going through could be accu­rately described as a cri­sis of faith; per­haps “rev­o­lu­tion” of faith would be bet­ter. Whatever the case, it’s bur­den­some. Christianity — as Jesus taught it — runs con­trary to so much of my life.

It’s 1:43 now… I really, really should be sleep­ing. But I wanted to share this, at least for no other rea­son than to con­fess my sins. Brethren, pray for me.