Here's why inner peace is scary: one who is at peace will not be as able to perform well, to be responsible in one's duties, to keep up with the externalities which must be held in check.
Alright, it's Devil's Advocate time:
What if Peace, in our attempts to hold onto it, necessarily becomes a fantasy, a collection of beliefs and symbols we hold onto which does not mesh quite so well with the daily world in which we interact? What if it leads to dysfunction and excuse-making? What if it keeps us from ever taking full ownership of our actions because we can allow agency and causation to flow backwards from us to someone/thing else, a greater Cause which we can use to explain away our doings?
Who cares if it enables us to make others feel better, to be more compassionate, if all we are doing is spreading a fantasy that brings comfort and yet also may keep people from truly dealing with their insecurities and pain in a way that will allow them to move on?
What if pain really is gain? What if hardness leads to happiness?
I'll be at peace. I'll have my refreshment, my prayer time, my feelings of wholeness. As soon as this happens, as soon as I let go of my future as a _____ (doctor, musician, etc), I become unbearably sensitive and excruciatingly needy, to the point where I can't actually accomplish because I'm so fixated on...something? God? What?? Simultaneously, all the things I thought I dealt with this year, all the pain and loss associated with my various relationships, it comes back, it makes me feel like I haven't really changed at all. And I CANT STAND IT.
Admittedly, when I went to volunteer at that very evangelical/fundamentalist camp for teenagers last summer, I came back completely invigorated, completely wanting to forget about the tangled paths my relationships had taken me through in that previous year. These things didn't matter anymore: I had love, I had forgiveness, I had passion. Inevitably, this ubuntu complex faded as I got deep into the fall semester. Inevitably, exposing that sensitive, excitable core to the people I lived with only led to me getting hurt, which of course led to classic, Nieztchean-style resentment of the highest degree. I became a victim.
If someone can show me a way to walk in the Spirit without becoming unbearably vulnerable, without using it as an excuse to not achieve or challenge myself, without becoming incredibly serious and sentimental, without allowing me to use it to feel like I can judge others, I will gladly, excitedly listen. Yes, I'm missing something. Yes, I've had it before.
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1 comment:
"If someone can show me a way to walk in the Spirit without...using it as an excuse to not achieve or challenge myself..."
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I can show you. But I'll tell you what I thought of immediately when I read your entry.
At Austin College, there is a group thats apart of Religious Life activities called the ACtivators. On the whole, its made up of a majority of Presbyterian students (like myself) but we have Christians from all denominations. Every year we print the same thing on the back of our t-shirt. The design on the front changes, the color changes, the picture on the back changes, but it always says the same thing on the back.
"God gave us brains and expects us to use them."
That means a lot of things. But, in short, what we think it means foremost is that God created all of us to be gifted and beloved people. God did not create us in this way only for us not use our gifts, but instead to give them freely and in love whenever possible. We share our gifts with each other freely because we have nothing that was not first given to us by God. We share our gifts in love because we were first loved by God.
God gave us brains and expects us to use them.
I empathize with your blog. I have spent a LOT of time with the conservative christian crowd because I value them as brothers and sisters and believe deeply in religious pluralism. I know how they rely heavily on emotion to preach the gospel and to talk about their faith. But over time, I have come to realize that much of what they do and say does not work for me specifically because their way causes me to spend entirely too much time thinking about myself, and myself and God. For a while, I forgot that I belonged to a community of faith.
I think God would be appalled if I ceased to challenge myself and continue to achieve. These are not actions befitting of a gifted and beloved child of God. I believe God wishes I live every day with the goal of coming closer to the quality of life that I was created to live. That quality of life would look something like loving God with all that I am and loving my neighbor as myself.
Keep using your brain and I think you'll find good answers-God gave you a good one and expects you to use it.
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