Peace

As a person living with agoraphobia and severe social anxiety who is going through menopause after a hysterectomy to save me from cancer four years ago, a sense of calmness and peace can be hard to come by.

If things weren't hard enough, the big jumble of mid life hormones tripled the issues I had. I've spent a great deal of the last few years in suicide land. The dive into depression was deeper than I knew it could ever be. I can't take hormones to make it easier because it has the potential to bring back the cancer. The anti-depressants will work for a while, then drop me off a cliff like a rock. As of this writing, I'm doing okay.

The worst thing anyone can say to me is "If you come back to Jesus, he could give you peace." I want to smack them over the head with a Bible and remind them that I was just as mentally ill when I was a Christian as I am today.

I remember 1 John 4:18: "Perfect love casts out fear". Matthew 7:7 "Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it will be open unto you. For everyone that asks, receives. He that seeks, finds. And for he who knocks, the door will be open."

Well, I asked and I didn't receive. Instead I was baptized in fear, awash in primal panic. People tell me "well then you must not have been saved". You weren't there, dude. And as soon as you can see the heart of people, I'll give you a cookie.

The idea that a Christian is a happy person is a generalization that is flat wrong. I offered statistics of that in my last blog. On the other hand, the idea that all non-Christians are miserable is just as incorrect and doesn't hold water.

Its great when someone's Christian faith brings them a sweet peace. I'm really happy for them, but to tell me that I can't have a similar peaceful experience unless I accept "Jesus as my Lord and Savior" is really rude. To say the only way I can experience something larger than myself and find comfort in it is to do it your way is cocky.

I used to find solace in Psalms 139.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹ You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

^{Wow. How nice. It soothed my soul. Then out of no where, things got mean.....}

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
    your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
    I count them my enemies.

^{Then cool again......}

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

As a Christian, I overlooked the "I have hated with perfect hatred" part. I can't do that anymore. Either God is a god of perfect love or a deity filled with perfect hatred, whatever the hell that means. (Is there imperfect hatred?) Its no wonder we skim the Bible to find verses that sooth our soul. To read it in its entirety is pretty scary and confusing.

I'm not dissing the Bible. Really, I'm not. But what I am doing is saying we have to be realistic. We can't pull the wool over our eyes when we realize that the Christian God, who is said to be the same yesterday, today and forever,  commanded infidels (unbelievers) to be put to death.  

^{2 Chronicles 15
12} They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their ancestors, with all their heart and soul. ¹³ All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.

I say all this to explain why I don't find peace in the Christian God. Because I didn't just skim the scriptures. I've read the good and the bad and I can't reconcile a God who is supposed to be so loving, but is in reality, so damn mean.

I take a big breath and quote from memory, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life." Then it occurs to me that there wouldn't be a hell if God didn't create it, and there wouldn't be a need for a blood sacrifice if God hadn't insisted on it. Not to mention in a normal, loving society, we don't see the killing of one's son as heroic, but the coldest, cruelest murder. How can Abraham be praised for being willing to plunge a knife into his son's chest to prove his obedience to God? And how can God be so cruel as to insist on this act? Is this a gang initiation for God's sake?

So, forgive me if I can't find peace in that. I just can't. I do find solace in many things. In a cool spring morning as the sun dances over the grass. On a warm summer night as the crickets and tree frogs sing a song that floats on the breeze. And even swimming laps in the pool where it feels as if I'm immersed in the water of tranquility.

We all have to find our way. If Jesus is yours and believing he is with you soothes your soul, then by all means, rest in that embrace. But please, I beg you, let me listen for my own peaceful whisper of the universe that brings me to that place that allows my spirit to renew.