I Want To Believe

"Belief is dangerous," said a long time friend finishing his Lean Machine lunch. I have watched this man navigate through many channels of faith and he is now clearly disappointed and disillusioned by the great let down of inevitability. I say it's inevitable for it seems no matter what persuasion of faith, somewhere along the line a fragment of truth will unravel all that you've compiled in beliefs. Everywhere I turn lately people are discussing their confusion with religious institutions and pondering the relevancy of beliefs as a necessity in today's culture. The wind of change is blowing from the East and it's not Mary Poppins that rides it.

Recently at a Christmas service all the children were brought to the front of the church for the message. Casey and Harmony were among them. When the teacher asked if anyone needed help, Casey raised her hand. I closed my eyes and inhaled because like her daddy you never know what will come out of her mouth. The teacher enthusiastically pointed the microphone in her direction and encouraged her to speak. She said she needed help with her belief in Jesus. There was an audible gasp but maybe that was just me exhaling at her words. I never saw that coming. Nervous glances were cast our way as people chuckled but clearly this staggered the man with the microphone. Life speeds forward at 67,000 miles per hour around our Sun and doesn't seem to wait for stragglers, indecisiveness, or for people who don't follow the script. He recovered quickly and moved on to the next child that mentioned something about a puppy. That was more like it. She seemed puzzled that an answer to her plight wasn't forthcoming. I felt like telling her after the service that from experience concerns of that nature have an extremely long lead time when it comes to answers.

I think Casey's demise of faith started when she ask if she could call Jesus on the telephone like she does her grandma. Jokingly I told her our carrier didn't include Universal coverage nor was Jesus on our friends list, but if she called 1-800-BE SAVED she could speak to a customer service representative. None of this helped her inquiry and further caused confusion but it sure made Rosie and me laugh until we cried.

I have flopped like a fish out of water concerning my faith and have recently come to grips with the fact that after a long exhaustive search I am back at square one. Cashing in my books at the local Half Price Bookstore, I sheepishly felt the need to explain why I possessed piles of religious ramblings. The clerk asked if I had found anything interesting in my quest and I spoke a single word, "Disappointment."

Can we know for certain that our perceptions and environmental influences can be trusted as it forms and molds our bias opinions? What we read is basically other's opinions that they derived from other's opinions. If it's all relative or comes down to individual beliefs then how can we get excited about a proclamation of absolute truth? It seems the more I dig the more the information points me to "infinity and beyond." Solomon stated that increasing knowledge increases sorrow and perhaps that's true, but I think the real thorn in the side is that our sorrow stems from exposing the facades we've been taught and trusted. Almost like a child with their security blanket ripped away, our accepted teachings were received in faith only later to be proven as a mere opinion or completely false to begin with. The commercial version of the Christmas story is one such example.

For years I believed the story of the three wise men who followed a star and found the baby Jesus while simultaneously an angel of the Lord startled shepherds in near by fields proclaiming the good news. As the story unfolds, all participants met in a manger on the appointed night that the Star in the East remained stationary over the Christ child. Is this your understanding that it all happened in one night? From Linus' speech in A Charlie Brown Christmas to the manger scenes in the front lawns we have been led to believe it was a singular event. I was an adult before my illusion was shattered and realizing that Jesus was a tottler before the Magi found him. King Herod's order to kill all children two years and younger supports the thought that Jesus must have been much older than an infant when they found him. Don't ask me where the little drummer boy came from. I'm still researching that one. The book of Matthew shows the Christmas story as it happened, not as a children's pageant or Sunday school story would have us believe.

1After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." 3When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5"In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:
6" 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel." 7Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." 9After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. 16When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

It's definitely not Charlie Brown's version. Picking fly crap out of pepper? Perhaps, but do we owe it to ourselves and to our children to present a faith according to its scriptures or allow a marketing campaign to determine our beliefs?

The gifts presented by the Magi are interesting as well for they were not random offerings for each had symbolic meaning behind them. Gold symbolized Jesus as King. Frankincense was a perfumed resin burned in the Temple to honor God. Myrrh was a scented gum used to prepare a body for burial. It appears the Magi not even of the Hebrew faith believed in the prophecy that a King would be born who is God and would die as a propitiation for our sins. Did they accept this with blind faith? I would bet the mortgage they didn't. We can see by their cunning dealing with Herod that they weren't gullible. The Magi were advanced astrologers and the prophecy coupled with the strange pattern movement of the Star in the East prompted them to seek more answers. As I've been taught in paranormal investigations, a singular event doesn't necessarily prove a haunt, but an event coupled with other signs and wonders is worthy of consideration. Apparently the Magi felt that such happenings were worth the long dangerous trip to Jerusalem.

What has always intrigued me in scripture are verses subtly sprinkled here and there among bedrock truths that suggest doubt. To even suggest such a thing is worthy of excommunication. Humor me. The older gospels, Mark and John, never mention a virgin birth, but the story goes that Joseph received a dream where an angel instructed him to take Mary as his wife for she was with child out of wedlock. Being a righteous man and learning she was with child he had planned to divorce her quietly, but obeyed the Angel in the dream. Later he followed the instructions of another dream where the Angel told him to take the mother and baby and flee to Egypt when Herod started murdering children to prevent the foretold prophecy. The Gita has a similar story concerning Krishna that predates biblical scripture, but we won't go there. Back to the point. Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the Temple to do what was commanded by law and the following happened. 25Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. 27Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: 29"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. 30For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31which you have prepared in the sight of all people, 32a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." 33The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him.


This would go down in the family record as miraculous in any household but we find long term memory loss prevalent among Jesus' people.

Later in scripture they couldn't find Jesus for three days and when they found him he was teaching at the ripe old age of twelve in the Temple. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he was saying to them. One would conclude after the previous dramatic events, prophetic dreams, and angelic proclamations that no further explanation should be deemed necessary concerning who Jesus is, but apparently that wasn't the case. Let's leap forward to when he was a man of about thirty years of age.

A wedding feast in Capernaum was in peril after the wine ran out. That can't happen at any party no matter where you fall in history. Mary approached Jesus and he stated that it was not his time, however he did transform the water into wine and thus we have the first recorded miracle. He said it was not his time as if she knew what he would mean by this but later in the book of John we have this: 20Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."

His family wrote him off as a lunatic but we are expected to believe without wavering. What of his disciples that saw Jesus' ministry from the beginning to the ascension? You would think that they of all people would adhere to an unshakable faith yet doubt found its way through the doors of certainty. The last chapter in Matthew gives us this to ponder:16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

Are you catching a theme here? Mary and Joseph were given prophetic dreams and undeniable circumstances yet they remained puzzled by Jesus' actions. Even after teaching in the synagogues and proclaiming that scripture was fulfilled in their hearing the people sought to kill him. John the Baptist while in prison sent his disciples to ask if Jesus, "Are you the messiah or should they wait for another?" He baptized Jesus for crying out loud, supposedly leapt for joy in his mother's womb when Jesus came near. Jesus replied to John's disciples, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." His disciples witnessed these miracles first hand and after the crucifixion of Jesus saw him walk through a wall and ask for a piece of fish so they wouldn't mistake him for a ghost. They put their hands into his wounds. They were taught by him for a significant time after the event in question. How could you not believe after that?

I have been told numerous times that if I don't believe without doubt that Jesus is who he says he is then I will burn in hell forever. I'm not too sure about that. There were those that stood next to him and were privvy to more than I'll ever be and they still doubted. How can I tell my little girl that she must believe? She believes in Santa Claus because she has seen him, talked to him, and he has left her gifts. She believes in the tooth fairy because she has evidence of a coin left behind and the absence of a tooth. I told her that she sees Jesus when people are kind to one another, when they forgive one another, and when they love one another. She followed that up with, "Why doesn't Jesus live here?" At that point I felt like saying, "Jesus Christ, kid! Give me a freakin break here will ya?" but I didn't. I'll try to find some Andy Griffith way to approach this, but in the meantime I will seek, wonder and hope that 'more will be revealed later' to both of us. It's a hard tango this belief stuff. There is something overwhelmingly compelling about the story of Christ and I have found no other religious text or writings available to me that has resonated with such power as the word of God simply by opening it.

Something keeps guiding me back to it even though my best efforts to discard it fall short. I hope Casey will eventually ask to hear another story about Jesus. I never realized how much I enjoyed telling her those stories. Perhaps tonight would be a good opportunity to rekindle a faith?