I like to think of myself as Absalom from the Bible. 

Here was David’s son. 

The Bible describes him as being very handsome. 

Absalom eventually gets tired of the status quo of the kingdom and rebels in an attempt to seize the throne from his father.  

Absalom believed differently. He saw a need for a change. 

When he tried to change the way his world worked, he was punished. 

He was killed when his long, beautiful hair got caught in a tree and one of his father’s servants stabbed him.  

While I am not being stabbed, I am caught in a tree so to speak. 

I am Absalom because I don’t trust they ways of my father anymore. 

The old teachings of being a Christian do not make sense. 

unhand me i am not a criminal 

though i've played a guilty part 

in the modern sense that one pretends 

their life is original 

This song ties in with my story. When I first heard it last year, I realized that I was the "criminal." I didn't want to be associated with my past any longer. I grew up going to Sunday School and was raised as a good Christian Boy. But let me be frank, I still subscribe to my faith, but in a new way. Let me explain...

Over the last two years I have come to find much of the Christian Faith I so happily subscribed to,

Lyndsay and I in Washington D.C.

useless.  By that I mean, I don’t believe in the Bible. It’s not that I have rejected the Christian Faith.  Much of what it teaches is good. Only, the Bible isn’t all that good.  My feelings toward scripture started changing when a dear friend of mine, Lyndsay, was diagnosed with cancer. My father called me while at work. His voice was still and quiet. When I answered, I knew that something was wrong.  “Son,” my father said. “It’s cancer. She has Leukemia.” My heart sank and I felt pinned to the floor.  Nothing made sense. Lyndsay was 19.  “A 19 year old is not supposed to get cancer,” I thought.  After talking with my father I returned to work only to find myself crying for the rest of the day. From that point on I began to observe the people of my faith. They would use scripture to help heal her but quickly move on with their lives. Many walked into the room with a fake smile, awkwardly positioned and uncertain of how to deal with the elephant in the room.  “God will give you nothing you can’t handle,” or “There is a reason for everything,” they would say.  My favorite was, “God has a plan for you,” as if it was God who wanted her to get cancer. It was aggravating.

Having 2.2 billion followers worldwide, one might wonder what is the reason behind the subscription to the Christian faith.  Looking at the identity of the Christian, one must understand that identification is dynamic and social. This means that faith is not developed by self or personal experience. One study argues that, “the continual shaping of our identities through identification is influenced by activities such as group meetings,”  Largely, the Christian faith and its facets are built off of weekly meetings as a body of believers. Psychologically this can be seen as group identity. According to Kelly Bouas Henry and her research done at the University of Oklahoma, group membership is a, “psychological state that leads to a collective representation of who one is and how one should behave." In terms of the Christian faith this would define its reasons as to observing the Sabbath, or following the teachings of Christ themselves which come from the Bible. 

Shared by all Christian denominations, the Bible is viewed to be an absolute truth, straight from the mouth of God. Jehovah Witness’s claim that, “The Bible claims to not just be a book about God, but a book from God.” This is the worldview of the Christian faith. Rene Pache writes, “Christianity is presented above all a religion of the word.”  The faith is not based on anything else but “biblical revelation.”  This is what shapes its truth and how the world is perceived for Christians.

In regard to Lyndsay having cancer, the Bible meant nothing. It was just a thorn in her side, and annoyance that kept popping up in the midst of the enormous issue that is cancer. Only there was quite more than just the Bible that created issues. It was also the payers of all the Christians that surrounded her. It’s not that prayer is a bad thing. Certainly, it helps many people. Prayer can be enlightening and can give a person perspective. Only, Christians seem to think that it is the only answer to life’s problems. As if the only way to prepare a meal was though prayer. Only, the entire universe knows that when feeding yourself, you actually have to make food. The same goes for cancer. You actually have to listen to medical advice. While many Christians have accepted the fact that medicine is good, some have not. They just pray thinking it will solve the issue, when in reality, it won’t. One day as Lyndsay was in her hospital room, an old woman came from the church to tell her that while she was praying God told her that the cancer was a curse because Lyndsay had read Harry Potter.  To which we laughed. If that were the case, everyone in my generation would have cancer. There was no way that Harry Potter put a curse of cancer on my friend. No, Lyndsay just had cancer. There was no reason for it. God did not cause it to happen. It just happened. I realized then, that the Bible and Prayer had little to do with cancer let alone any other issue in life.  I began to embrace a new perspective. I believed in God. Only, I stopped reading the Bible, and I no longer had much to pray about. I just stopped praying.

And then something else happened...

My Best Friend, Chris.

One night after a party with some friends, my closet friend in the world told me he was gay. At first I thought he was being funny. After all, we drank a lot that night. Only, he wasn’t. As we sat there, drunk he looked at me and said, “Alex,” he swallowed.  There was a long pause. “I need to tell you something,” he said. I waited until finally he said, “I am gay, and I always have been.” If this incident were to have occurred a few years earlier, I would have condemned him. Only, I couldn’t and wouldn’t now. I had no belief in scripture, or prayer.  Even as my friend confessed that he had prayed to God to make him straight he laughed. We both knew he never would be straight. He likes men.

i fled the country 

i thought i'd leave this behind

The truth is, I have left the country of my old faith and I have found a new one to believe in. During my changes, I talked with my pastor. As I was a leader in the church I felt that I had to confess. We met at Denny’s one afternoon and I told him everything. 

“I don’t believe in the same God you do anymore,” I said. He looked at me like I was a stranger. “I don’t even believe in the Bible,” I said. His look fell to a deeper confusion. He did not understand. “I don’t think I should be a leader in your church anymore,” I said. 

Since then we have not spoken. Not that I hate him, I totally respect what he believes. I just think he may see me as the untouchable, strange, God denying, Christian. Uncertain of who my new God was, we began to praise that one instead. What’s so great about making a new God is that you can make God to be whatever you want. 

This is how I think of faith and how does the rest of the world around me think about it? Is it okay to shift your perspective and what does the faith of my fathers look like in the postmodern world we live in today? Breaking down the Christian worldview many theologians come to the same conclusions. In his book How Now Shall We Live Charles Colson states...

 “Truth is God’s perspective, as revealed in scripture."

But that doesn't work for me anymore so here comes my little friend Moral Relativism. For one, morals are always relative. Colson believes that with the Bible all of these differences in what is moral is eliminated. But, is this a copout?

Doesn’t making the Bible a source of transcendent truth, also seem relative as well? 

One thinker has created a wonderful work on the Bible and its position in postmodern culture. In his book, The Rise and Fall of the Bible, Timothy Beal talks about the cultural icon scripture has been within American Society. Beal reports that 78 percent of Americans believe that the Bible is straight from the mouth of God and that nearly half believe, “the bible is totally accurate in its teachings.” Arguing that, “The Bible is a cultural icon of faith,” and is what, “closes the book on questions about the meaning and purpose of life.”  

His perspective is not that The Bible is ultimate truth, it is The Bible, is a truth. 

As A Christian thinker adopting postmodern ideas Beal is presenting his changing thoughts on the Christian faith and is embracing the truths that would do well for the rest of the faith to understand.  Beal is asking his readers to stop seeing the Bible as the, “substitute for a vital life of faith,” and argues that “the iconic book of answers,” discourages thoughtful from its readers. Allowing postmodern thought to bend the ideas Christians have on scripture will allow readers and believers in the biblical text to see their faith in a new and enlightened way and shifts the paradigm of the way faith is viewed in the world. 

but i built the same damn house 

on every acre i could find 

I still believe in the idea of faith. I am by no means an atheist  I am searching for answers and I want my faith to feel free to say that perhaps they are only part of the truth rather than the whole truth. There is more to this world.

Here is how faith has to fit in society...

Today, the postmodern world suggests that because there is no ultimate truth there are many ideas that can be presented. Hence, why believers are the innermost circles. They are what every other idea is formed around. The believer does not form the world society or the universal truth as postmodernism suggests. In terms of Christianity, it is part of the major circle that forms the entire world. It does not hold all the answers but still has something to say about the human condition. From a fundamentalist perspective, the opposite would be true. They would argue that believer is the outer circle and that their faith should shape society, and ultimately universal truth. Postmodern thought invites discussion and changes in all humans and has a greater grip on the understanding that the world to big to have that narrow of a perspective. Now there can be a discussion on how other faiths fit into the circle as well? What do Muslims have to say that Christians are missing? What about Hindus? Buddhists? Allowing faith to be the innermost circle creates the world where all faith is acceptable and ideas are fluid. 

Would I say I am a Christian? Perhaps. I don’t know. I subscribe to the teachings of Christ, when he says to love others and be kind and serve them, but I don’t listen to the rest. I guess I just pick and choose what parts of the Bible I believe in like everybody else. I still do not understand. Like Absalom, I am stuck in a tree. Only I have a hair full of questions. Perhaps I will wait here forever, perhaps I will be stabbed by a scary, zealous, Bible thumper. I hope not. No. I want to see something different. Maybe eventually they rest of my faith will catch up and join me as Absalom’s and we can all dangle in our reality until we are at last cut down to know the truth. 

Please watch this video and think about its message. The beauty of faith is that it can be anything. The beauty of Jesus is that he too can be anything. If anything this has been my prayer to Jesus. I don't need answers. I only need to ask questions. If Jesus is there, he will hear them, but if he is not I know that I will be just fine.