I wanted to stay warm and cozy in my cocoon. I wanted to live in my box with everything so clearly defined and labelled; my box of comfort, security, and certainty with all of the answers I would ever need. Evangelical Christianity was my answer! I've been told that since I was a child. This was my story. This was my song. I did not ask for this unraveling, upending, uprooting, undoing! Rather it came to me like being broadsided by a semi, a train wreck, a
The Stories I Tell Myself
These micro and macro Narratives are Powerful and yet very Subtle like automatic downloads that install themselves and become virally integrated deep in our psyche.
They unavoidably alter our operating system and
due to their undetectability they can easily
become permanently embedded imperceptibly.
This undetectability is sustained through invisibility and familiarity.
These downloaded stories even come with
automatic updates that make them stronger and more resilient every time they are repeated.
The inner work it takes to simply
see our own narratives (myths*)
must not only be done daily but for a lifetime.
Because these narratives are installed so early in life,
they are nearly impossible to change without
powerful intention, years of hard work, and a very good reason.
This, I know, from experience.
The Stories we tell ourselves
form our identity and purpose.
The Stories we tell ourselves
form our values and beliefs.
The Stories we tell ourselves
become rooted deep in our psyche.
The Stories we tell ourselves
form the lens through which
we see everything.
Nothing can be seen that is seen
without first being distorted and colored,
exaggerated or diminished,
twisted and spun,
by this lens.
The Stories we tell ourselves are very personal.
Once we adopt a Story,
it becomes a part of who we are.
When someone denies or questions our Stories,
It feels like we are being attacked personally,
and we defend ourselves fiercely.
Because those Stories define us,
the attack feels like it is
a speer being thrust through the heart.
With the stories we tell ourselves,
we are Creating a World and Life View.
From that which We are Given
we create what works to survive.
But what happens when it no longer makes sense
and ceases to work or create meaning or feel real?
What if the framework through which we perceive the world crashes and we end up with the "blue screen of death"?
Once upon a time, I was happily and solidly settled into my world and life view. I could proudly proclaim that I built my house on a rock and not on sand so that I could endure the inevitable storms of life. As an Evangelical Christian for 50 years, I would look out from within and see a perfectly sensible world which came to be from a Creator God that wanted companionship and love and worship. So out of god's loneliness and discontent, first he fashioned, out of the chaos, the earth with the sea and the land. Then would come the plants and creatures of the sea, then plants and animals of the dry land. Last of all, he created man to rule over and care for the earth. Then, low and behold, the man became needy and lonely, just like God, and from man’s rib God created a helpmate, a woman to be his companion and helper to care for the earth. Then the man-god would say, "It is good."
As far as the story goes, it seems that this entire universe was created to compliment the story of God with mankind sitting at the center of it all as he fawns over them like prized possessions, a collection of artisan chess pieces. It reminds me of the Aristotelian system with the spherical Earth at the center of the universe. Seems like a waste of space if it is all about us. (Did you know that there are 10,000 stars for each grain of sand on earth?) Also, “me in the middle” or “all about me” is a common human thing that we usually grow out of as we grow up, just like we did when we thought our world was the center. But that’s another story.
Not only was man prone to being lonely even when he had God as his companion, the best companion possible, he was also prone to wander, make his own way, and make his own decisions. Knowing full well that humans had this strong propensity to rebel, God tempted Adam and Eve with the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, again knowing full well that they would fail, for this is an inevitable part of the story; also knowing full well God would lose his fellowship with mankind which is supposedly the reason for creation. After all of that work creating a beautiful world, it seems that things quickly became really intentionally self defeating. All of that could have been thought out and planned a whole lot better with god being omniscient and could have been corrected or avoided with god being omnipotent. We are still crying out, “the game is rigged!” So of course they ate the forbidden fruit, of course it destroyed their relationship with God, of course it caused them to feel naked and unclothed, and of course it caused God to turn his back on them (like when Jesus was forsaken on the cross, “my God, my God, wherefore hast thou forsaken me?”) and no longer walk and talk with them in the garden. In fact, God kicked them out of the garden, this beautiful place that God made to be very special for mankind on earth, making them toil and till the ground for food, hoping someday to return to the Garden of Eden. Again, what a waste of space and beauty and love due to vindictiveness. (Why couldn't it have been a teachable moment to make mankind more wise, especially since the tree they ate from is the tree of knowledge! What is wrong with gaining the knowledge of right and wrong, good and bad???) I wonder how he kept them out. Being rebellious like they are, why didn’t they return in defiance of the rules that they already broke. And why did God create them to be rebellious. Or if he created them to have a weakness for rebellion, then why did he tempt them and why were the stakes so high? It seems there was probably a much better way to give free will to mankind which an omniscient God could have thought up. He had plenty of time, an eternity, to plan and get innovative and more creative. I wonder and wonder about the flawed design at the core of our stories.
I've realized that the probable reason that we have a sin story in which we call ourselves born in sin and totally depraved ("such a worm as I") is so that we would need a savior. If we believed that there is a basic goodness that is sacred at the core of every person, then we live a good and moral life unhindered by the self fulfilling prophecy of total depravity, while living life to our greatest potential. Even as a kid, I knew my heart was good and that I always tried to do good. I've always been able to trust the intentions of my heart. Why would I allow some story to change who I know that I am?
So in summary, the primary story is quite a whopper that I've been rooting out for 10 years. The three gods (father, son, spirit) became needy and lonely among themselves even though they were each others' perfect companions, and decided that what they had wasn't good enough. So they created a very flawed creature that they knew (due to omniscience) would "fail" and "fall" and become totally depraved, losing so quickly the "fellowship" between men and the gods because even though the gods proclaimed creation to be good by saying, "It is good" and then taking a well deserved break on the Sabbath, their first stab at creation lacked proper foresight and strategic planning and they were left with nothing but depravity. The gods realized that this is not meeting their need for fellowship and so at one point, because it had gotten so bad, the gods wiped out all of creation with a flood and started over, not realizing that "total depravity" would be left fully untouched by the flood; yet another design flaw. So anyway, they started over only to end up in the same place they were before the flood. So then there was this interesting "fix" where the gods (father, son, and spirit) decided to sacrifice one of them (the son) in order to somehow make mankind good again; again forgetting that the cross and death of a god left mankind's total depravity completely untouched and even though true gods can't die. And look at the mess the gods have left us with now! Then there was one last attempt to "fix" the world. The gods sent Donald Trump, the narcissistic man-boy bully to fix America and hence fix the world by osmosis or brainwashing Evangelical Christians and filling them up with all kinds of conspiracy theories. This brings us current in our story of the gods, as we wonder what's next. Nuclear annihilation? But will that affect total depravity??? Oops. Then there is heaven and hell. Maybe these solutions will finally fix this mess. Or will those in hell and heaven still be totally depraved and in constant rebellion???
But anyway, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I held onto my world and life view because it was a rosy lens from which to see the world and live my life. Who DOESN'T want rosy? Who DOESN'T want happy? And back then, for 50 years, I had no reason to question it or look at it from the outside. I had no idea or intention of letting that go. All of my questions had answers. Those stories were fed to me. All of my fears were comforted. Those stories were plentiful. And death could have no victory because we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. And besides, God sent his only begotten son to earth to die 2000 years ago, for me. I'm still not sure how changing a culture from animal sacrifice (which cannot affect total depravity or sin) to a culture and religion of human sacrifice fixed anything. Like I said, there were stories galore. And stories are only as believable as our worldview allows them to be. Thinking back, it is incredible how strong the skeptic filter was for me, meaning the filter that blocked out my questioning. All the things I could have questioned, I never did. I didn’t even see them, like blinders on a race horse. Now I call it being very gullible and naive. Sort of reminds me of cult-like behavior like we've seen in religious sects for centuries and like we are seeing in politics today, a personality cult. Believe even if it makes no sense and has no basis in reality. But it was more subtle than that since it was in the air that we breathe; my family, my peer group, my friends, and my church social group. This virus of the mind seems to me to start with the zip code and then sustain itself through the family unit that all thinks the same, using and abusing our most trusted relationships.
But if that world and life view became totally unsettled and disrupted causing my lifelong perspective to disintegrate before my eyes, sand in my hand, dust in the wind, ashes in my mouth, then what would I do? What is left? Emptiness, a hollow echo, vast nothingness. The old old story ceased to work for me and no longer made sense, in so many ways. It has been crumbling for many years. But I would not admit it or even look at it. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t see it. I was afraid. I was gasping for breath and grasping for life. I was desperate for what has been familiar all my life. But my mind kept wandering and wondering about so many things. Cognitive dissonance, like neverending tinnitus, was growing, ringing in my head, 24/7, even before everything crashed around me.
