You roll the dice yet?

How can you really be assured of your salvation? How do you know your faith is the right one. There are a plethora of spiritual paths out there... a lot of them claiming to be the only option. So how do we actually know? How do I know? I was brought up to believe that Jesus is the way the truth and the life, but how am i assured of that?

The truth is, I am not. I cannot know whether my path is the path to God or not. Everyone is faced with this dilemna of deciding their own fate. Everyone must pick a side, everyone must choose. And guess what... not choosing a side...choosing not to choose, IS a side. And your camp might be the biggest if that is what you relate to. The stakes could not be higher. You have to take everything you know and roll the dice, and before the roll, you place your soul on the green felt. You only get one shot, so are you sure you're willing to gamble your soul on your beliefs? I'm not.

I'm not so sure I want to take what I have been spoon fed my whole life and the place my soul on the line in the off chance that someone, somewhere down the line thought this through and made the right choice. I am responsible for myself, and in the end when I face God, I'm pretty sure He isn't going to buy "Well...that is what they told me." I can see Him saying, "But what do you think?".

People will hush this sort of talk because it shakes the foundations of other peoples' faith. It has certainly shaken mine. They will call this "doubting" or "back sliding" or "losing the faith" or even "a spiritual battle". People will probably pray for you to recieve help from God to get the faith back. I think that if I was God I would say no to every prayer like this.

As if commitment is salvation. If I am really committed to being a Jehovah's Witness, and it turns out that Charles T. Russell was full of shit, then the level of my commitment to that will not make my beliefs correct. At different points in history the majority was convinced that the world was flat, disease was sin, and a fat white guy could squeeze his fat white ass down every chimney in the world. Please, if anyone did that much exercise they'd be ripped. But we thought we were right, and would scoff at anyone who said otherwise. The same goes for Christianity. Pentecostals think that Baptists are out to lunch, and Baptists think Anglicans are actually pagans, and everybody, even within christianity, thinks that they are the only ones who have the whole picture. So a search like this will be met with hostility from the kind of christian who does not have a faith that they have developed over trials and crushing and refining. They have a faith built on sand and don't want to be forced outside there comfortable little box. So they stay totally committed. Not to what they know at their core, but to what they have been told. Never straying outside of that...never asking any questions...because questions are...dangerous...questions are risky.

I think it is a moment like this, a moment of searching, that actually squeezes some real faith out. It is not until we break down the walls of what we were told to believe, that our own beliefs will surface. And until your own beliefs surface, you will forever be leaning on the wind.

So I question it. I question everything. Because in that moment, when I get forced into a position of admission, I want to say something that i believe at my core...not something that I was told when i was three.

I think when that time comes, in the end, that's all you really got. Whatever answer you have at the end of your search (if you searched) will be all you have to lean on. And i think that if you are honest and diligent in your search, God will honor that. I have a hard time believing He will be really pumped about the people that were too scared to rock the boat and therefore missed out an a more complete relationship with Him. Being really commited to the wrong thing is just being really wrong. Or at least less right, less certain then you could be. I want to approach God with confidence, knowing that this is the guy I spent my life building a friendship with. And I cannot see that being comfortable most of the time. Ya...that is what I am going to do. Make my best guess. Then roll the dice.

Crybaby

About every 6 months or so, I cry. I don't go into the closet or something, or have it scheduled in a day planner...it just kind of happens. I see something on t.v. or in a movie that grabs my heart and creates that reaction. And tonight I discovered a theme. Kids. More specifically, the father and child dynamic. More specifically than that, the father and daughter dynamic. It gets me every time. We watched a show that had a father watching his daughter die. It nailed me. I fought it off for a little while. Tried to swallow the lump in my throat, and open my eyes really big so that the tears would not roll down my cheeks, and i probably could have beat it back down into submission. But then i heard the voice in my head say, "Why? Why are you so opposed to that type of emotion? You're alone with your wife in your home. Let it fly man.", I had no logical rebutal, so i did. I gave in, and I cried.

To tell you the truth it felt pretty good. Felt like i was draining something that had been welling up for a while. After I was done, I started thinking about what it was in the father/daughter scenario that got me so much. And I think it is the simple fact that someone that you took care of, and is still vulnerable and innocent in your eyes, is in pain.

That got me thinking about being a dad. I can't imagine having to watch your kids learn the hard way. The restraint that it would take to let a child go and do something that you know will hurt them (and told them that, but they wouldn't listen), completely escapes me. I don't know if I'll be able to do it. But I hope I can. I am smart enough to know that the world will never allow you to completely shelter your kids. It seems very much like a delicate balance between protection and negligence. Letting your kids experience enough so that they don't get blindsided when the get into the "real world", but not so much that they become part of the "real world". With so much hanging in the balance it would be easy to give up and take the easy road. Let your kids join the other generations now being raised by t.v., and don't worry about it.

To my wife: Thanks for being my safe place.

To my mom and dad: Thanks for having the courage to let me face my own consequences and learn from my mistakes. I make a lot of them, so this learning style really works for me.

To Dad: Thanks for knowing when to step up and sacrifice, when to hold back and let us learn, and when to allow your kid(s) to step up and sacrifice for everyone else.