Lying for Jesus
We’ve taught the world to be liars. As much as some like to deny it, the religion of Christianity had had a major influence on our world. It has been a major influence since the foundation of America, and has informed our mores and beliefs to this day. But, there is also a virus in Christianity that has affected us to this very day. Sadly, most of those mores and beliefs that the common believer and unbeliever alike hold come from that infected religious tradition. And we’ve become liars. We didn’t mean to, we meant well, but it happened.
Many people who read my words believe that I’m going through some “stage” or that I’m just getting things off my chest. That’s just not true. I’m just tired of the dishonesty. We have been taught that there is no faith in us when we name the treacheries of life. Depression, loss, hunger, alienation, heartbreak: pain. So, we deny these. In our spiritual DNA has been inculcated a belief that we’re supposed to be perfect, and that we must not question the talking heads. This, to our own detriment.
We’re trying to live the impossible! We’re sold that lie about being perfect, so we try and when we can’t, thank goodness, the church just happens to have a behavioral code that looks, smells and wears like perfection with twice the guilt! And that so doesn’t work! Listen: IT. DOESN’T. WORK. As a friend of mine said recently, “we’re living a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy” of the real thing! We’re frustrated Christians with no story to tell because we’ve never stepped into the narrative ourselves! So, we lie. Because that’s all we know to do, and Jesus will be very displeased if we don’t do something, right? Sigh.
I think that is why I love music, poetry, art and am coming to love the Psalms so very much. The Psalms are so very honest, even suicidal in many places. They don’t mind calling the Creator on the mat for the painful struggles of life, nor screaming their unwavering trust throughout those struggles. They are, in a way that is completely uncharacteristic of modern Christianity, brutally honest and real. These songs sing from the page how things seem and are in their rawest form. They tell the truth and wrestle honestly with the Creator.
Why do we deny that things need to change so desperately in the modern church? Why can we not just name the truth that all is not well, and that it indeed feels as though, many times, God is not on his throne? Why do we not accept that sometimes we may not even believe in such a God? Why are we so afraid to offend our brothers and sisters, and name falsehood for what it is, and still be their brothers and sisters? Why aren’t we simply honest with the world for freaking once?
Are we afraid that they won’t believe in our plastic god and join us in our impressive lies? This is my choice. This is my creed. Honesty. It feels like putting on clothes that are two sizes too small, but only because I’ve been used to wearing the massive cloak of untruthfulness for so damn long.
We are nice, mediocre human beings with an unnamed ache in us so huge that it will one day undo us all. We don’t rely on God because we don’t trust him, because we are afraid to try him. We are afraid that if we lean too hard, the plastic will crack on our idol and the world will see that we are liars. We are even more afraid that the plastic of our idol will crack and we will see that we have nothing but our own painful lives in this forsaken world.
The thing is, God is no idol. It must be not only spoken, but acted on in faith, that truth. We must walk away from the camp we’ve set up just out of reach of beautiful, fearful Truth and to the edge and fall away into it—our anger, our fears, our scapegoats that make us feel justified, all falling away behind us, until we are fully naked, adrift in the sky of faith, with only God to catch us. All the plastic must be left to crumble, and we must see, for ourselves, that our faith is worth the jump. We may only see the ground rushing ever closer to us when we do, unsure until the moment the bottom comes, but we must do it! What we’re doing, my friends, isn’t working. Because it’s dishonest. So, fly. No wings in sight, jump and soar into all that He is.
8:19:21 PM 
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