Fuzz

This morning in Chapel (yes, I go to three church services a week: one at school, one at youth group, and a third at regular Sunday church. They all tend to prompt blog-rants), I had another one of those moments where something just seemed completely off. This time it was concerning prayer. I've indirectly hit on this concept before, but since it struck me as especially significant today, I thought I'd expand on it some.

I've been pretty fuzzy on the entirety of this concept for much longer than I normally am. Normally I come to understand enough for the unrest to be absolved and I can go on with my life. This one has yet to go away, and it's growing fuzz on my brain. This is the first topic I have written on that I will likely not be defend my position on with much confidence. I have yet to find anyone to talk to about it, because from what I've seen, I doubt the majority of my teachers would agree with this view.

I don't have much concrete. This topic has a lot more personal juice in it for me than previous posts. The next few hundred words is simply an attempt to collect my scatterbrained thoughts in a semi-coherent fashion. That said, I believe it's time to continue with the ongoing self-assessment of my own worldview that's been initiated in Pocahontianism and Milk; this time, I go only a few months into the past.

Last year this time, I was a hardcore adherent to this pattern of believe, which I can no longer bring myself to consent to: that we ought to speak to God as we would to our closest friends, and not only speak, but engage in conversation. Real conversation. The kind defined as "oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas."

A year ago, I would emphatically have agreed that prayer is not a monologue. I would not have had a moment's hesitation when asked if God speaks to us more or less as we speak to him: I believed that prayer consisted of statements and questions and answers and replies. I remember once comparing it to an IM conversation, in contrast to an email chain, where one can send countless messages, yet must wait for a reply. I had long conversations with him. When talking to other friends was not possible (often in the middle of class), I would read my Bible behind my binders and talk with him on my Math notes, instead. When I was lonely, I would talk with him. When I was bored, I would talk with him. When I was having a hard day or was feeling lazy or extra tired, when I felt anything of interest or nothing at all, I would talk to him. Because he is here. Granted, he often did not answer, and this frustrated me. I figured it was because I wasn't listening hard enough.

The danger is, when one believes God speaks to them through the thoughts in their own mind (and it was rarely otherwise for me), it's very easy to get God (..."God") and themselves mixed up. In fact, it's inevitable. Whatever mystical distinctions Christians often make so that one may tell if the message is from God or the Devil or just themselves, I think it's bogus. If there are two morally acceptable but contrasting thoughts that pop up in one's mind, how is one to decide which is God and which is them? The Christians would answer that this answer is obtained through more prayer and meditation. I call this imagination. Many would say I doubt. The only way I may answer is that the only reason I have come to reject this method of prayer is because I absolutely refused to do so for so long.

I have a pretty freakishly vivid imagination. Not abnormally so, but nevertheless, it is strong. Generally, people would say that this is a good thing. And I suppose it is, to a certain extent: without my imagination I would be substantially less interesting, more culturally inept than I already am, I would not be capable of making the music I do, I would not be able to write, I would certainly not be able to argue as well. But when this 'great' imagination interfered with prayer, it became an issue.

I sometimes engaged in the same sorts of exercises the speaker in Chapel this morning was advocating: prayer walks, quiet time, sitting in the stillness meditating on God and refusing to quit until God had spoken. I doubt even this speaker would disagree that when one is sitting in silence anticipating an answer, one is altogether more likely to hear one: that is the entire point of these activities. But that is the very problem, as well.

Imagine this scenario (it is one that is overused by Atheists and the like to disprove God's existence, but I believe in and love God, yet think it might have some merit): a kid sits in his room talking to an imaginary friend he's had made up. He imagines conversations with it. Countless days go by in which he does this every day for about an hour. After awhile, it speaks back to him, without his consciously feeding the friend lines. He interprets this as it communicating with him: the beauty of the imagination.

That was me a number of years back. I tend to see it this way: it's happened before, and it could happen again. Obviously, there is no imaginary friend. I believe it was this same breed of imagination that delivered the many answers to my series of "IM" prayers. Furthermore, there were times beyond the "IM" prayers in which he no longer "spoke" and I was desperate enough to hear him that I could tell I was imagining God's voice, creating it within myself (though sometimes I could hardly tell if it was or not). This sort of prayer is entirely too ...subjective, flexible, if you will. I do not believe God is subjective. I do not believe his reality is 'open to interpretation.'

(I believe we live in a Lovestory.)

I have issues trying to decide how much of what God said to me last year was God and what was me. Some I know was me and others I can't imagine that it could have been, but the simple idea that I'm left to decide what was him and what was not makes me cringe. So I've decided to ignore last year for the mean time and settle on this:

God teaches us retrospectively. God teaches us and speaks to us through our growth and relationships, through our lives on a much grander scale. Does the author of a novel interact in first person with his characters? Likely not. I've never heard a story of this like. It seems to go along with the theme of love/faith/dedication displayed through action instead of merely through words (which the Bible seems to value so much) that God would speak through the greater picture, large-scale action. God speaks through the whole of the story, not necessarily through immediate conversation, like a mortal human being.

This is the point at which it gets tricky for me: since our imaginations are part of 'the whole of the story,' following the line of this thought, it is still possible for God to speak through our minds, using our imagination. He just uses it as an event in the story, a complication in the plot, instead of some type of genuine Divine chat. This is the thought that continues to confuse me... it makes it seem as though no way in which God 'speaks' is actually his direct communication with us. Makes it seem as though simplicity is not authenticity. And all of us are simple, so God has never been genuine to us. Somewhere, there has been a lapse in logic. Perhaps it is Logic itself?