'tis a gift to be simple...

so i kinda had a tough weekend. i was wrestling with some questions and issues and ultimately just ended up feeling like a complete crazy. so i've tried to let myself process for a couple of days so that i don't vomit craziness on here.

anyway, i think i just get really frustrated when people make their faith sound so simple. it's nothing against them, it's just that mine isn't. i wish it were sometimes, but mine just seems so complicated. but it's somewhat of a catch-22 (whatever that phrase even means) because if your faith is too simple, you miss out on the intricacies of the faith, but if your faith is too complex, you miss out on the fundamental truths. i don't really understand it and i don't know where the balance is in that, and because i don't feel like i get it, i end up just feeling confused and even a little guilty.

i shared these thoughts with a friend recently and this was his response:

"The point is that it is not simple at all. It takes sophisticated faith to believe in a God who transcends time. Then once you get that far you have to believe He provides a dwelling place with Him for His followers. No simple faith, but the faith of a child. Children trust with a complete love and faith. Grown-ups have to dig deep for a child-like faith."

i told him i didn't like that answer. i don't feel like a child or a grown-up. 

but at the same time, maybe he's right. though i find myself wrestling with lots of heady questions, maybe at the end of the day, my faith boils down to a pretty simple foundation. i don't trust all the complex thoughts, so i can only hold onto and bank my life on what i know to be true. and sometimes, the only thing that fits in that category is that God exists and that He loves me. i have a hard time understanding that second part, but i have to believe that it's true. 

i'm reading a book right now called "letters from a skeptic" by greg boyd. it's a collection of letters between this theologian and his atheist father. it's REALLY good. his dad asks some really honest questions and he responds with very matter-of-fact answers. in one letter, his dad asks why a big, all-powerful God would even care about us little humans. here is part of boyd's response:

"If anything, it seems to me that God's personal characteristics are displayed all the more in our smallness. Just as we would admire a rich king who, for the sake of love, would be willing to forsake all for a peasant girl he fell in love with, so it seems that God's love for us is all the more magnified precisely because we are so small. The radical difference between a lover and the beloved displays the radical nature of the lover's love. In this light, God's love is shown to be 'infinitely radical'! Maybe that's one reason why he made us so small in the physical scheme of things in the first place."

interesting thoughts, huh? maybe one of these days i'll be able to comprehend the simplicity and complexity of his love for me. until then, i'll try not to beat myself up about it.