Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ahoy There Mateys!
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Doubting Tom Redux
Apprentice
# 18128
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Posted
Ahoy Mateys!
I am a brand-newbie aboard and rather than just be a ghostly presence like some Ancient Mariner (or a stowaway) I thought I’d send this SOS and hope for a welcome!
When I was 40 I went to the eye doctor for an exam and was told I had Presbyopia, but I quickly disqualified that assessment and told the doc I was non-denominational. And I am, though I’ve been connected to the Brethren, Calvary Chapel, and Vineyard Christian fellowships. (Ships? No pun intended.) I’m a Yankee, a former colonist (I see you’re mostly Brits), and please don’t hold that against me.
Mine has been a long (41 year) roller-coaster ride as a believer in Christ. Rather similar in respects to the checker-board history of Israel it’s been. The joy of release from pyramid building in a metaphorical Egypt was all too soon followed by a longish crossing of wilderness, and even after tasting milk and honey I lapsed repeatedly into apostasy, idolatry, spiritual (and actual) adultery…I broke the Big 10, all of ‘em, even worse after my conversion than before. (Yes even murder…of myself…suicide…just attempted grant you, but if lust of the eye is bad as giving in to the flesh, then it follows that attempted murder …you get my point).
Which ultimately led to a Dark Night of the Soul, a kind of life-review full of shame, regret, and remorse (all I could think about was every screw-up from little to large I’d ever made). I felt, and was, quite lost. But then a reasoning process occurred in which I hesitantly, tentatively, began to think that the salvific work of Jesus was sufficient to cover ALL of it. All that history from my personal BC to the present. And my assurance of salvation ticket got punched anew.
Then two voices in the broad stream of the faith (Rob Bell and Brian McLaren, very controversial both, celebrated by many and vilified as heretics by many, up to and including being assessed as pre-cursors to the AntiChrist!) came to my attention. Both refreshed and invigorated my tender renewed faith. And Bell in particular crystallized and articulated my own theology back to me (the “beautiful heresy” of Universalism) as well as pulled back the curtain and showed me the incomparable, peerless, incredible, preposterous majesty of Jesus, his Father, and their Book. My prayer had been “Let me see you as you truly are, that I might love you, and enlarge my heart, that I might love others as you would have me do.” Bell was the answer to that prayer, and after reading Love Wins (his controversial best-seller) I sat on my porch, tears of joy streaming down my face, blubbering “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over to God.
So if it isn’t already obvious, I am heterodox, not orthodox, and possibly heretical. I was in fact going to change my Ship Name to the “Happy Heretic”, but too late, I was already locked in as
Doubting Tom Redux
-------------------- michael-g-paul@sbcglobal.net
Posts: 1 | From: Garden Valley, California, USA | Registered: Jun 2014
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
Hi Tom and welcome! Thanks for your introductory post.
There are indeed a few Brits here but we are also chock full of Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and others - including a number of ex-pat whatevers [myself included] - and well sort of rub along together mostly harmoniously.
I will copy your post over to the welcome thread to save any sort of confusion.
Welease Woderwick All Saints Host
-------------------- I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way. Fancy a break in South India? Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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