I Need You

Fellow Seeker is becoming disenchanted with his Episcopalian church. He told me that he wants to start going to a Unitarian Universalist one. I told him I'd go with him - we have actually been planning to go for a while. He made it seem like he would want to make this his new church, though (and new denomination). On the phone, he sounded blasee about the church he once loved. I suspect it's more than the church. I think that F.S. is drifting further and further from traditional Christianity. It's funny, because Skeptic once predicted that I would go further from it than F.S. would, and yet the opposite is true. A month or so ago, I was speaking to a friend of mine who recently became a Christian after having attended church for over a year. I asked him, "So what made you finally do it, after all this time?" He told me that God kept pulling him, and no matter what happened, he always felt that pull. I may not be a new Christian but I knew exactly what he meant, because as a sometimes-astray-Christian, I still feel the pull.

I was thinking recently that I really need to get my relationship with God together because I need a refueling station. I know that's a really selfish reason, but let's be perfectly honest: we're humans and we're selfish. How many people turn to God after having catastrophic experiences when they need comfort and an assurance of the afterlife? How many look for Him when their lives feel hopeless? It's what we do. I remember bringing the subject up to Cool Aunt when I was a teenager, and she said, "Yes, it's selfish, but He accepts us anyway."

So anyway, a refueling station. Someone to go to when I just can't take everything anymore. Before everything hit the fan, I was reticent about returning to Christianity. My life was okay, so I didn't need to worry about pleasing God. But when my life is not okay, I do. I can't face these things on my own. I know how selfish that is. But I would rather go to God because of selfishness than not go to Him at all, and I'm sure He feels the same way about it.

I'm not saying I'm going to use God or religion. I'm not. I'm in this for the long haul - good days as well as bad, sunny skies as well as thunderstorms. The point is, I need God. I'll keep searching and questioning, and perhaps I'll alter some old beliefs and ideas, but that basic fact won't change. And if, as Cynic says, that makes me weak, then so be it. If a need for meaning makes a person weak, then most of humanity throughout history has been weak. I don't think it's about strength or weakness... I think it's about being humble enough to acknowledge that we don't inherently have everything needed for a fulfilling life.

From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
'For in him we live and move and have our being.'

-Acts 17:26-28-