Saturday, March 28, 2015

From the malcontent, because this is the hard part

From the malcontent, because this is the hard part
I’ve been writing critically about church for the past few weeks. I've come to a place where exasperation and pain have turned into a form of acceptance, resignation, and finally reflection. I haven’t posted everything I’ve written, and I still have a few rounds in the chamber. But there is an unhelpful vanity in my critique. While I am honestly asking questions, I also realize that they are questions hard to answer. If I don’t expect answers, then is my critique merely for rhetorical effect?
No. I harbor hope, and my resignation to the state of things, of church culture, is conditional. If church continues its trajectory with its current set of functioning values, then I am resigned to the logic. But I have thoughts, a vision, for how things could be different. To be honest, I prefer to ask questions because I am insecure in these thoughts as they haunt me. I am pinging the universe with my questions, looking not just for resonance with others but other seminal thinkers, others haunted. Because as long as change is optional, a choice, I have doubts about our strength of will to achieve it. I doubt myself the most.
But I am going to try to do the loving thing, which is not to question the universe and then judge it when I don’t see in it my reflection. It is loving to patiently work out what I am trying to say, to achieve, so that it can be understood. Trying to articulate, to communicate is fearful, it is the hard part, because I am not sure I understand it myself, and because when a thing is understood and rejected, well, that’s a bit more terminal than harboring excuses of being misunderstood. It is loving to deal with the easy critiques I know will come, because they always come when someone states something positively with conviction rather than hiding behind rhetorical question marks. And hopefully after the easy critiques come, I’ll find substantive critiques, and through these traction with real people, and through this, forward motion.

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