I want to write a series of posts about my faith. I hesitate to use the word 'journey' because it is a word that is used so much for so many things. Faith is a journey, but it's more than just that one sweeping statement. It's a lifestyle. It's a set of beliefs and values. It brings meaning and purpose to life.
I'm a deep thinker. My internal wrestling with the world takes me to some dark places but my natural inclination is to figure a way out. I have a pessimist brain with an optimist heart and a sunny approach to life. It can lead to some interesting discussions and dialogue. It led me to question everything I've been taught. It led me to freedom. It led me to study sociology - the perfect academic subject for such a confusing personality.
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My faith began when I was 5 years old so I can say that I have been a woman of faith for 45 years now and what that looks like now is actually very similar to what it looked like at 5 years old. It's like a full circle, but it's changed and altered and grown and shrunk, nearly discarded - but now it looks more like it did at 5 years old than it did at 25 years old. But the difference is the knowledge of God that I have gathered along the way and yet, to many and to myself once, it is the knowledge of God that is often the stumbling block.
I met someone this week who had been a christian missionary to a remote, little-known Asian village - the exact same place that I was at nearly 30 years ago. It was a joyous chance encounter to talk to someone who knew this place as I did. We exchanged jungle stories and I heard how the area has grown and is thriving. As I was thinking about it afterwards and remembering those days I thought about the saying we used to have when I was in YWAM (Youth with a Mission) which is the organisation I was with when I travelled to this remote village.
"To know God and to make Him known."
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| A village in the far north jungle of Sulawesi. Copyright Rachel Lees |
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| Walking through the jungle into the village Copyright Rachel Lees |
I thought I knew God.
I never imagined, when I was with YWAM and in the youth and fervency of my faith going to remote, isolated jungle villages that one day I would nearly walk away from it all. That I would be led into a deception so deep and dark and hollow that it would crush my faith and everything I thought I knew about God.
I stripped back everything I thought I knew about God and started over, not because I wanted to but because I had to. For my faith to survive - if it was going to survive, the culling was vital. I questioned a lot. I questioned how my foundation of cultural christianity had led to me being deceived. I questioned why God would take me into spiritually dangerous places.- and I'm not talking about remote Indonesian villages here, but rather the gilded, plush offices of a well-known christian organisation. I questioned the image of God I had been taught and the one I had constructed in my mind. I questioned everything.
I don't claim to have the answers, but I do want to record what has been for me, an extraordinary, revolutionary, sometimes rebellious experience and why now I feel a confidence in my faith and my beliefs that I've never known before. I was explaining to someone recently why I don't go to church anymore. I will cover this later, but in a short summary, the main original reason is that I did not want man's idea of God and man's interpretation of God to influence my life and my life decisions anymore. as it had done once, so catastrophically. I decided to set out to know God and to know Him so well, that when a counterfeit was introduced to me, I would be able to see it. I would not be deceived again. But what I found is - the key here is that if you want to know God - really know God - you can't do it on knowledge alone. You have to have faith. It's vital, and often - paradoxically - the key ingredient that is overlooked.
So here's what my series is going to look like:
1. Creating an Idol out of God - a study into cultural christianity
2. Faith can never be anything but faith - it's not knowledge, it's faith
3. Counterfeit Faith - endemic lies in mainstream christianity
4. Jesus is the centre of everything - like it or not, and many - even christians - don't.
5. Simple Faith - like a child
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