Quoting scripture

The Bible was quite a significant influence in my early life - and up until recently I suppose. In fact, as a child I can't remember not knowing Bible stories and verses. I remember reading Genesis to Deuteronomy in a King James Bible when I was all of seven. I read it like a story; simply fascinated and intrigued with the story of Moses and the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt. My Nanna also had comic versions of the Old Testament in book form - kind of manga style, but not. My brothers and I simply loved those books, devouring them every time we visited.

We also knew a lot of "memory verses" due to the fact that we had a lot of LP records of a little doll named Marcy who would sing a lot of songs that were either pure scripture or Biblical stories in song.

It all seemed so real then; simple, uncomplicated, straightforward. God loved you. Jesus loved you. That was it. No more. No less. We were children. We accepted it all and there was no pressure to be good or do good or reach any ideals of Christian behaviour. You could believe in both Jesus and Santa Claus without one compromising the other. You could engage in the mystery and magic of childhood made up rituals without the fear that you were entering into something sinister or evil.

I don't know when it changed...or do I? Adolescence? Going to a place where all things spiritual became incredibly intense? Seeing too many "out there" things that we should never had witnessed without at least a good debrief afterwards? I don't know. Maybe a combination of everything.

Religion has left me confused and conflicted. It claimed to have all the answers and yet left me with so many unanswered questions. I still can't reconcile events and circumstances in my life with the things I was presented with as "truth". Looking at things in the cold, hard light of day there seemed to be a "formula" to sowing and reaping and yet despite sowing what I was told to sow I never seemed to reap what I was told I would reap. 

Scripture quoting sometimes seemed like a bandaid when things seemed to hard to deal with. God has not given us a spirit of fear but of love, power and a sound mind sounds great in theory but what if you're struggling and have always struggled with an anxiety disorder? What about if your anxiety is so bad that it stops you in your tracks, freezes you to the spot and renders you so dysfunctional that you think you're going to lose your mind? Continuing anxiety seemed to be more of a statement about a lack of faith or trust which then fed into the idea that you weren't a "good" Christian, that there was something wrong with you, that then became a part of the anxiety cycle.

What about if you pray and pray and believe for the healing that you're told is yours in Christ and yet you still have to hand your precious babies over to into the hands of surgeons time and time and time again? What about the woman down the road who prays for a little red haired baby and gets one and all you pray for is a healthy baby, unaffected with a particular genetic condition and yet your precious, amazing, wonderful baby has had to endure more medical interventions than you even care to recount? 

Sometimes "Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and don't forget to thank Him for his answers," just feels like a slap to the face when you're feeling that providing the red haired baby seemed more important than providing you with your healthy one.

I don't think I've ever gotten over that one. Obviously, by the fact that I continue to revisit it.

So here I am. Out in limbo. That's what this feels like. No Mans Land. Neither believing like I did and yet reluctant to extinguish that flickering candle that has always burned for as long as I remember. Even now many of those scriptures come back to me and I turn them over in my mind as one would examine a shell on the beach. I wonder about their significance and application to my life as it is now and whether there can ever be some kind of reconciliation between what I was taught and what my experience actually is.

This is a very lonely place to be in for I feel there is no one to talk to who might relate. There just seems to be these two opposing camps - those who are completely enmeshed and sold out to "the truth" and those who are either indifferent or don't believe at all.

Surely there is a place where the two can live in harmony?