Faith comes by hearing...

So it's been a little while since my last post. I'd really hoped that my next post would be more hopeful and optimistic. Maybe that'll be true by the time this post is over? I guess that could be one of the benefits of blogging huh? Hmmm?

It's actually been an even tougher few weeks for me than before my last post. My skepticism has turned into cynicism and my thoughts, once again became jaded, ugly and hopeless. Out of sheer desperation and with some flippancy I recently listened to an audio talk by one of my favorite songwriter/musicians Michael Gungor. After reading a comment or two that he had made on his facebook page I decided to swallow my pride and pick his brain with a private facebook message. He had referred to himself as a "chronic doubter" and that piqued my interest. So I did the geeky "fan thing" and messaged him, I'm glad I did. I'd read a few of his blog posts over the past few years and that, along with his songwriting, indicated to me that he had some life experiences that I'd love to hear about if it were possible. They seemed familiar and apparently our struggles were similar. I was quite surprised when he actually responded to my message with far greater "depth" than I'd expected. We wound up exchanging a few messages back and forth and found that though I'm a few years older than he, we had SO MUCH in common. Especially with some of the things that we struggled with growing up. We both knew too well the casualties and collateral damage of growing up as a pastor's kid, damage to us, our families, and those who followed the leadership of our pastor/fathers. When our dad's respectively "stumbled" it had quite a ripple effect on everyone on the aforementioned list. ANYways, those kind of events have a tendency to shake your faith a little (sarcasm). In the present, I can see how those events are responsible, at least in some way for this struggle I've been in recently, even though nearly 12 years has passed since those events. Michael shared some encouraging thoughts concerning struggling with faith and some gentle reminders of how he has nurtured his own many times. Oh the irony and profound simplicity of the scripture, "faith comes by hearing...". It was something I really needed to... um... hear. The things I did NOT need to hear were the "christian cliché's" that are offered every time a doubter is rebuked for having questions. The things I NEEDED to hear were honest descriptions of struggling by men and women of faith. So, I've begun to change the "diet" of things that I spend time reading and listening to. I'm the first to admit that I get more from "hearing" than reading, but the two are closely linked. Whether it was an audio "talk", a sermon, a profound lyric from a song, or something I'd read in some form, I had begun to recognize my hunger for something, someone, or some personal experience to re-inform my faith and make me re-examine my beliefs.

As a musician, I had somehow forgotten the amount of strength and encouragement I could receive from a musical experience. Hearing people struggle through their questioning and lack of faith is not something that I'd spent time a lot of time taking in whether from a book, song or even visually. Not in the past few years. Quite the opposite. Music is a language that in the past had spoken volumes to me but only in a "positive" way. Somehow I'd grown sort of calloused to it's effectiveness at informing and communicating ideas. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying I needed my emotions to be elevated or fooled into a certain way of thinking so that I could "feel" better. Not at all. I needed to experience something first hand, a tangible something that forced me to re-evaluate my beliefs. Some good old honest struggling that is often void from modern Christianity. Something I've talked many times with my buddy Frank about what he describes as "making two piles of beliefs, those that we no longer believe and another pile of whatever is left that we DO believe." The first pile is getting larger and the second slowly is dwindling. I'm encouraged by that somehow. It's not getting easier at all but I feel like at least now I've got access to a helpful tool or exercise to get me to a better place.

My wife and I recently spent half a day in Charleston, SC... without our kids as they were spending a few days with family up in NC. After spending the day driving and then walking around the downtown area (sweating like crazy in the blistering heat) we ended the night by attending a concert by another favorite songwriter/musician named John Mark McMillan. Let's just say it was a much needed experience that I consider an answer to the order I consistently placed with my pitiful little prayers over the past few months. I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty, awe and sheer power that we can sometimes see and experience in God's presence. That experience has been a much needed source of hope and re-informing. I'll re-cap that evening in another blog sometime soon. Still processing that night...