At face value, it’s not hard to imagine what I mean by the phrase. For about two years now, I have almost entirely abstained from practicing the Christian religion. I can no longer offer assent to the classical creeds or sing the songs. In a very basic sense, I’m simply an apostate, or better, a heretic. After years of studying Church History, I’ve become increasingly comfortable with these titles. They are only awarded to the most pious, passionate and honest of theologians. Even given the lewd title of this project and dubious nature of my intentions, I hope you’ll read with an open mind. What I’ve written here is nothing like the cold conclusions of an indifferent scholar. I hardly fit either category and I’ve used no footnotes, referenced hardly any scholarly works. But nor is it the bitter letters of a spurned lover.  This is my life. If there is any genuine meaning to the word soul, surely this is mine.

I had no choice in my inheritance,

I had no choice in its evaporation.

I’ve cursed my arrogance,

Through terror and heart palpitations.

On this side, I now know

it’s never simply our permission

That bids belief come and go.

While I was in seminary, something happened to me; something that I’ve been grappling for a way to describe ever since. I wasn’t the average seminary student to begin with. I was convinced early into my first year that going into professional ministry wasn’t an option, I would have to hope for a career in academia instead. Thus, I concentrated my efforts on understanding currents in ancient, medieval and especially modern theological and philosophical thinking. I had already acquired a bachelor’s degree in what my private Baptist university called “practical theology”—which essentially means how to run a church service. I had spent years in college ministry and wasn’t particularly interested in stepping up my preaching game: thus, my divinity school journey took the form of an intellectual quest, an ascesis of the mind, in which the oft-quoted Augustinian bishop directed my course:

fides quaerens intellectum

Some of the little latin that I remember. It’s usually translated as “faith seeking understanding.” My point is that I was not on an intellectual quest for faith but just the opposite. My faith was on a journey for intellectual insight—or as Augustine prays in his confessions, I believed in order that I might understand. My belief was a precursor to any understanding, and likewise any intellectual activity whatsoever would have to be constructed atop the foundation of faith. Unfortunately, in my case the ground of faith proved much too soft for the weight of understanding. My experience of theological education seems to have produced a different effect than that of my friends and fellow students. This is what I’m left with:

God lost me in seminary

I keep coming back this way of phrasing it. It seems worlds more accurate than to say that I lost God, or that I lost my faith, or even that I quit being religious. All of these, I fear, mislead the reader to infer something I do not intend. That God lost me, however, represents a manifold truth from my perspective.

God lost me is a statement of conscientious protest against the ways in which God is conceived of in religious and philosophical thought by and large. It’s important to acknowledge the rich tradition of doubting and questioning religious truths. There is a rich chorus of mystics, madmen and prophets through history with whom I’m now attempting to join. So when I say that God lost me, in one sense I mean that the God of Christianity has lost my trust, my belief and my loyalty.

That God lost me also seems wildly appropriate because of the way falling out of explicitly Christian academic, ecclesial and social life has felt.

It’s like we’ve been misplaced, forgotten, or just intentionally ignored; and I’m not sure which is worse. My brothers and sisters marched ahead without me, and like a faithless or fallen Israelite left behind in the wilderness, I watched my friends leave me. I marveled as so many around me simply proceeded with lives of prayer and worship, as if God were still alive and real for them. It was as if the floor fell out from under me to send me into free fall, yet it held others up as well as it always had.

For a time, I genuinely pondered (“hoped” is much too strong) that I would be the proverbial lost sheep, the one worth leaving the flock to fetch. I’ve had no such luck. God remains out of sight, beyond all conceptual horizons, unfindable. Whether it is God or I who is lost, who am I to say?

Through this project, I invite you into the overwhelming web of (my) religious existence. A year before graduating from seminary, I wrote out a contract, a contract which allowed me to release myself from the ties of the Christian faith. However, the stipulation was that I give it a year, a full 12-months of honest re/searching, listening, reconsidering. This blog is about that year and where it has led me since. It’s not my wish to put forward an a/theological treatise and I’m certainly not interested in debating whether or not God exists. Rather it’s my hope to invite you to consider the words that follow—words that have been slow and painful in their birth—as my response to a challenge called God. I promise to be honest even when it hurts; and perhaps some of you know that most of it hurts. Ambiguity is essential to my experience, so I will also offer a second promise of disappointment for those expecting eloquent argumentation, systematic cogency or even a definitive “conclusion”—I’m simply here to tell my story, probably even more for myself than for you.

I won’t be surprised to get the question, why write something like this? My answer is simple: I had to. To refrain would be dishonest to my experience and the stories of those like me, it would be disloyal to the radical voices of the prophets that shook me from a stubborn slumber, it would be cowardice in the face of convenience.

I can’t afford to ask myself how to avoid hurting the feelings of christians, even my own family, friends, mentors and teachers. That much of this project will be something of an indictment to theologians and ministers is a side effect that cannot be helped, to pull punches out of respect would leave me in violation of my main critique – sacrificing honesty for loyalty. I have promised to tell my story– it starts with a spook. Am I haunted by holy men or by heretics? Pews, books, choruses, pulpits, grape juice: I charge them all.

 

peace, peace they say                                              God, God they say

while from truth they lead us away                    to keep jobs, to stay safe

when there is no peace                                          when there is no God