About 15 years ago I was camping with a group of high school students. One morning before dawn one of them woke me and took me fishing. I stood on a rock in complete darkness, tossed my line out into the water (which I could not see) and waited. I remembered as I was casting the line out into "nothingness", I thought to myself, "I wonder what's out there..."
That's exactly how I am feeling as I am writing this...
One of the ways that I have coped with difficult times in the past is by writing. Physically seeing thoughts turn into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs have always helped me process my thoughts and sort out what's going on inside of me. The other day as I was struggling through another bout of depression/despair, the thought occured to me, clear as a bell: "I need to write".
So, I am embarking on a writing project. In the last 2 years or so, going through depression and emotional pain has rewritten literally every page in my "belief system". One question that haunted me during this time was why after being a Christian for close to 25 years, my faith seemed so "useless" in helping me in my pain. I believe, at least in part, it's because in North American Evangelicalism, we have built a "system of faith" that does not take pain seriously. All of Scripture was written in a context of pain. Yet so often we read and intepret the Bible without taking that context seriously.
In the last 10 months, I have felt "casted out" by some of my closest "friends" in the Christian community. And yet in a strange way, pain has given me a sense of connection with the Biblical narrative. I want to write about my own journey in these last couple of years, and how pain has taught me a new way of seeing, thinking, and understanding my faith. For most people, their faith helps them to understand their pain. For me, my pain has helped me to understand my faith better.
Here is my "cast into the darkness": If you have a story from your own life on how pain has helped you see or understand your faith differently, I'd love to hear it and perhaps include it in the book. I am hoping that the sharing of our stories will spark new ideas and new thinking. Ultimately, I hope the final product will be something that will help the Church to become a kinder, more accepting, less judgemental place. In other words, I hope this project will be woven into the "grand narrative" of the church's journey towards Christ-likeness.
So, please offer me your stories, words of wisdom, advice, input, encouragement, etc. Post a comment, or if you wish, send me an email (alfred.lam@gmail.com). Looking forward to hearing from you!
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3 comments:
I have no story to offer, as my pain is nothing compared to yours. But recently I'm studying on the topic of spiritual healing, and I think the books by Leanne Payne (such as The Healing Presence") and Josef Pieper (such as Faith, Hope, Love) may be helpful to you on your endeavour.
Would love to read your story.
Bravo! So glad to hear that you are writing, Alfred. You are VERY gifted in that! Your choice of words and the way you deliver your thoughts are just unbelievable! That was why you managed to capture the attention of the listeners so well when you delivered sermons in the good old days!
God can use you BIG TIMES yet if you only allow Him. You're still in my prayers everyday!
sibling wannabe
After reading your blog, I can totally relate to your experiences. Thanks for writing them, some of the things that you describe really resonate with me. I had (sometimes i still have) a period of intellectual struggle with my faith and I just felt so alone and unsure of my identity. It just seemed that most of my life involved church: friends and family attend church, my values were bibically based and grew up believing in God. Once the God part was shaken, it seemed like everything else was too.
It was extremely difficult to relate to some of my friends anymore, granted some of them tried really hard to understand, but just couldn't. They prayed for me, but it just made me feel like I had a disease or something. The hardest part was not being able to pick a side, I was sitting on the fence for so long about the existence of God. I felt so uncomfortable going to church and fellowship. It wasn't the people, but just knowing I was in the 'house of God' but not knowing if there was a God at all.
I've only recently decided that I do still believe in God, but in a different way than before. A big thing that really helped me through was the realization that I wasn't the only one struggling, I was able to find a friend of mine who was in a similar place and it was encouraging to share similar stories of inner struggle and to share things that we had learned to each other.
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