The worlds we create...

Have you ever seen the Truman Show? For lack of time, I can't set up the plot with the subtle nuances it deserves. Suffice it to say that it's a guy, born into a particular world, that, over time, realizes that the world he's always known isn't all that it seemed to be. As he discovers this, he increasingly has an appetite to break out and experience life on the other side of this bubble. As the show carries on, his desire to step outside the prescribed box becomes almost maniacal. The movie concludes with him fighting his way through the smoke screens and oil spills and forest fires and hurricanes thrown into his life to prohibit him from leaving. It's fascinating really.

The older I get, the more I realize the multiple fabricated worlds that I've grown up in and created for myself for that matter. Worlds aren't always imposed upon me by others, I do a fine job of unknowingly creating these utopias myself. Sometimes I feel like Truman, caught between all that I've ever known and longing for what I've yet to taste. I'm in a straight betwixt two as it says in Phillipians.

I drift by default back to the comforts of my past. I daydream about the simplicity of having something and someone else think for you, entrusting your decisions to their soveriegn rule. I wish for the days when things seemed marked with such clear directives, distinguishing between the black and white, guiding you through the haze with hard, fast laws of living. I honestly do.

But then there are days like today where I feel that I've been trapped in a sort of thinking, a kind of living that has prevented me from entering into all that God had in mind when he created humanity in His glorious image. It's like I'm out-of-body watching myself interact with the life that's been created around me and that I've taken part in constructing. People move to and fro around me almost robotically, I feel robotic myself. I'm caught in a hypnosis of sorts, conscious of this reality, yet strangley paralyzed to change what is happening around me.

Christianity is a religion that I've grown less and less fond of. I watched guys yesterday scream from the corner at passerby's about death and damnation and wondered if we are both going to heaven and whether I even want to be in the same heaven that these guys are violently inviting people into. I wanted to pull my car to the curb, walk up to them and beat them to a bloody pulp. I was so angry inside, disturbed both by their actions and the depth of my own responses.

What is this faith I've espoused and clung to for so long? Why does it translate into this sort of evangelistic mode of operation? Why do I feel a weird guilt inside that I'm not living the "hated" life of a believer, arousing conviction in others and inviting persecution on myself? Again, I feel like I'm dislocated. I sit here in this coffee shop suspended in thought and wanting Jesus to sit down with me and talk some sense into my vacillating spirit.

I don't like Christianity this week...I've seen too many dark facets of this cult we've created, this sub-culture of protection and provision to keep us feeling good about ourselves. And yet, I'm sort of at a loss when I crawl through the doorways leading out into the real world...it's less regulated and more dicey. I don't know where my home is...out there or in here. Over there or over here. They both have their seductions, they both have their repulsions.

This I know, calling myself a Christian doesn't really give me the warm, fuzzy feelings it used to. I'm not sure what a Christian is anymore these days...

My home as of late has been the Gospels...it's the only place my heart can relax and smile...