Runaway Believer.

I ran out of a church service tonight--though not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

Singing about how I've been found, and saved, and loved, I just lost it. Thoughts raced along with my heart. I love these people....they are good people...I can't lift my hands like that, it's not that I can't, it's just...why is there always an undercover cop here...what does it mean to be found...God, so much, so much love for you...there's no such thing as certainty...wouldn't it be nice to fall to all of this, just to once feel certain...I'd always know, I've always known, that I am not one for certainty...I am Hesse's "nomad"...just lift your arms, you know you want to...you could get married, and have kids, and volunteer at this church, and never have to question again...you'll always question...I miss being able to talk to Jake...so many Christians around me...I miss my friends in Chicago...I wish I had Christians like me to talk to...Father, I love you......

...I need air. That's when I bolted. Walked around the building, the size of which thankfully gives a good lap. I watched the rest of the Q&A session from the flat screens in the lobby, and tried to figure this all out. Something's not right. I feel it. But what?

I read, and think so much about issues of spirituality that such questions are never easy to navigate. That's not a dis on reading and thinking, but a warning. If you want to hold an autonomous faith, you need an informed faith. An informed faith can rarely be a simple faith.

I'm so acutely aware of the lobbies on my heart and mind. I know the argument that will be lobbed at me by the evangelicals, and the responses volleyed back by the less-enthused (be they non-Christians, or Christian non-evangelical sects). My mind is in constant spiritual motion, weighing, and debating, and balancing, and trying above all to love. I need to carve out some peace. A moment of still in the storm.

Why do I come back to this place that so obviously stands against so much of what I believe about Jesus? I'm addicted. I think because it's big and shiny. Like Vegas. Addicted or not, the litany is convicting. The place smells rank with prosperity doctrine. John Lindell claims a certainty about spiritual issues that I think is troublesome on its own, but can so easily foster self-righteousness, and intolerance on the part of attenders. I think that Jesus would be unhappy with the way that money is used to create an ultra-trendy atmosphere of secular Christianity.

On the other side of the scoreboard, Lindell is a kickass preacher who has a knack for saying what needs to be said about sin. Those people are good people, who whole-heartedly believe in their mission, even accepting that they (like myself) sometimes have a flawed understanding of Christ's mission--they are the most loving and inviting people in any of the dozens of churches I've been in.

Discernment. I need discernment. There's an answer here. And a method of seeking.