Truths

Initially, I was completely stoked when I saw Osama Bin Laden had finally been killed. I mean, it’s been nearly a decade since the United States began the search for him; I was only in the fourth grade when this started. This is huge.

I know this is an historical event, and I know how much emotional closure this must bring for so many people. Yet, after the news had spread, I began hearing from friends, saying while they recognize the significance of what has happened, it seems wrong to be celebrating the death of another, however cruel his actions. Because God calls us to love and forgive, unabatedly and unconditionally, for that is how we legitimize and share the glory of the Lord.

Reading their words made me take a step back from my initial reactions of celebration, and really examine myself as a human being and self-declared Christian, as well as what this collective enthusiasm says about who we are as a people. Perhaps, as humans, this response can be constituted as “typical” or “normal” for who we are, because we are eternally imperfect. We exist within what my Bible professor describes as “an evil age,” where sin, death, and Satan rule. At the same time, we are living in a new age that provides us the opportunity to find ourselves in God’s love, to learn from Jesus’ sayings, to place ourselves beyond that age of darkness. We are called to love as God loves, reconcile as God reconciles us every single blessed day of our lives. For when we act this way towards that which should be considered the most vile in existence, we act as a blessing to all lives, to all nations, just as God promised we would become.

Perhaps this is an instance of love the sinner but hate the sin. I don’t know. I am taking time to reconfigure how I view this major event that has happened within my lifetime, and find honesty in my feelings towards it. Hopefully, it will bring about new aspects of myself and others that I have not seen before.

I don’t what has been going on with me lately. Even as I sit here, I am struggling to find the right words. All I know is something in me is wrong and I don’t know how to fix it.

I dont feel anything.

I don’t sense him near me. In fact, I never have. Throughout my entire life, I have always considered myself to be a Catholic, a Christian, a believer in God and a follower in Jesus Christ, the holy son of the Father and my savior. Even now, I recognize everything he has done in the world forever, and what a miracle the death and resurrection of Jesus was.

But, today, I was sitting in my school’s chapel, as I do regularly, listening to the songs, hearing all of these voices lifting praise towards our Creator, and I suddenly had this jarring sense of dispassion. I felt nothing. I looked around at my fellow students, and all I found myself thinking was how big if hypocrites they all were, including myself. We gather together in Brown Chapel, Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning, and we all act like faithful Christians who will offer up our entire selves to God, follow his Word, and never allow ourselves to wander from our faith. We act like we are the holy chosen people for 45 minutes, three days a week, before reverting to our same, depraved selves.

Yet, I’ve met the believers. The amazing people, who have encountered God in their lives and have been so marvelously moved by him; I watch the people around me during chapel and I see them swaying to the music, their eyes close, hands thrown upward in worship and praise. They seem to feel God and sense him so strongly and the whole time I’m wondering, “Why can’t I feel that?” Why am I unable to feel the Lord around me and within me like so many obviously can?

I am sitting there, pondering this. And I am no longer able to sing along with the songs.

It just seemed like such a lie to sing about giving my all to him when I can’t even feel it honestly. It’s the same when I try  praying to God. As soon as I begin to speak, my words feel insincere and fall dead; another lie. We are warned to avoid acting fallaciously, to not appear as a follower if you really aren’t purely for the sake of appearances to others, for that is also projecting a falsehood; not only to those around you but to yourself as well. And right now I don’t know what I am. I can’t feel him, and I feel like such a fraud and so lost in where it is I stand in my faith. I find myself wondering if I really do believe in him or if I only think I do because it is all I’ve ever known.

I know it’s considered “normal” to doubt, but I hate myself for even doing so in the first place…