Just so you know, this is going to be one of those musing, long-winded, sappy, spiritual posts. Just fyi. You’ve been warned.
Towards the beginning of this month I sank into the emotional pit. I couldn’t stand to look at my art, I would well up if I started to draw, and I couldn’t lay down at night without every insult and betrayal coming back to haunt me. I found myself bothered with the smallest things. Just the mention of something could set me off into a long-winded tirade. I got irrational and defensive, and most days I just wished I never rolled out of bed.
Little did I know that the best medicine was sitting on my shelf.
My best friend sent me a package a while back that among the contents contained an extended limited edition dvd collection of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. One of the DVD’s was a short biography of CS Lewis’ life, as told by him in a letter to some students. I listened to it while I did my homework and I found myself really moved by a lot of his own observations about himself and about the world. The way Lewis was before he really found God reminded me of some of my closest friends. He was a skeptic, and because he had experienced so much pain, he didn’t want to believe in God. Any belief he had was that God was a celestial bully looking to make everyone miserable.He was told that he needed to feel something in church, and he suspected that that was exactly why he didn’t. He considered himself an intellect and that because God could not be seen, explained, or observed that he wasn’t something he should bother with. He instead turned to science because it made sense to him. Because in his mind, Science was just and God was not. He disagreed with God and decided to embrace the world.
I have so many friends that feel this way exactly. Most grew up going to church and were told that they should feel God, and because of that they just didn’t. Most have never read the Bible save for passages that are popular for their Christian friends to throw out and those that their atheistic friends throw out. They don’t entirely want to read the Bible because they’re afraid of what they might find in there. On one hand, their atheist friends say that it’s full of contradictions, hate, and judgement by an unjust entity. That the Bible is a book written by men and can’t be taken seriously. On the other, you have Christian friends who may or may not actually understand the verses they toss up on their facebook or twitter every morning. For these people, it’s safer to just not read it. It’s safer to define God the way they want to so no one gets offended.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C. S. Lewis
I think Lewis understood that more than anyone. He wanted to be seen as an intellect, a down to earth individual, a man of logic and sense. A man of the world. However- Lewis slowly began to realize that God plants a seed in everyone’s hearts that shows itself in different ways. Some people outright deny it, some reject it.
Everyone has an imagination. Some of us suppress it as a thing that belongs strictly in our childhood, clouding the reality of the world and twisting our world view to have hope in things that just aren’t real. However, everyone has one. When the first man was created, so was the first story.
Lewis often mused that the worlds we see in our imagination is God’s way of letting us know that there is something more out there. That there is another world that’s greater than the one that we’re in, a place that’s more beautiful, more fantastic, and beyond anything we know. Even the Bible eludes to this several times. After all, God understands the meaning behind your thoughts and knows the imaginations of your heart. Our minds can’t comprehend heaven because we can’t understand perfection. We can’t understand forever. We can’t understand what it means to never be sad, angry, unhappy, cold, hungry, or tired. These things are part of who we are and who we always have been, but the knowledge that there is more out there is given to us. It’s why even adults are fascinated by stories. You can get almost anyone to sit and listen to a good story. You can’t get anyone to sit and listen to a political ramble.
And that’s kind of what I’ve come to realize. I’ve focused so much on this world, the politics, the hostility, the things that I know I can’t change that I lost that little part of me that would imagine unicorns running beside the car on road trips or that thought that I could have an honest conversation with my cats. I looked through my drawings and saw that the life was gone. There was no heart, no spirit, no love for the time I spent on them.
So I’ve started going back to the things that used to take me away from everything. Instead of turning on talk radio in the morning while I work, I turn on an all instrumental station of Pandora and I daydream. I see scenes from my roleplays, I let the music tell me a story, or I just hum along if I know the story. Instead of sitting down to watch the news, I’ve downloaded all the Narnia books to my kindle and I read that. Before class I just draw whatever comes to mind. I’ve taken angry, sad music off of my main playlist and instead filled it with hymns, christian pop, happy music, and instrumental scores from my favorite movies. Instead of looking for some guy to come along and make me happy or trying to fit in with the groups on campus, I’ve learned to look at the people God’s already put in my life.
Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.
C. S. Lewis
Truth is, I have very few friends that share my faith. I badly want to sit and talk to them about God, about Jesus, and about what it’s done for me but it hurts to have skepticism and rejection thrown back. I can’t make them feel something by telling them that they need to feel it. Lewis hated when people preached to him, but he did love an honest friend. He was lucky enough to have Tolkien who would just sit next to him and tell stories. Eventually, through the seeds of imagination, Lewis realized that he had no love for this world and wanted to live in a world more like the ones in the stories he and Tolkien invented. And eventually by jumping into those worlds, the lion made himself known.
There’s a lot to be taken away from that. I’ve always admired and loved both Tolkien and Lewis. In a way, they were my mentors. I have books from both of them from their popular ones to their lesser known things and they’ve always come back to my reading list when I needed them to.
Myself? I lost my faith for about a year. I hated going to church because it was something that was expected of me. I didn’t like singing the songs because I didn’t know who I was singing to. I got baptized because I wanted my family to be proud of me. I prayed, but it was generic. My dad and mom would preach to me and I remember the resentment I had for them when they did. I even had friends that would preach to me or say “I’ll pray for you” whenever I got angry with them. I wanted people to like me. I didn’t want to be one of ‘those’ Christians that was always smiling, but never meant it. I didn’t want to be the type to say “praise God!” then turn around and bully someone. I knew too many people like that and to be honest, it was supposed Christians that drove me away from God. They were fake, they were judgmental, and they hated everything my friends liked. Only when I had a rough falling out and my family hit rock bottom did I feel something.
No one made me feel it and I didn’t find it in a church. In fact, to this day I can’t stand going to church. I liked the messages of one pastor but he’s left and I’ve not attended since he has. I don’t like pastors that cry on que and I hate youth groups because, frankly, they’re just another clique of people with fake smiles.
I found God because I was sitting alone. I had been brushed off by the only friend I had at the time because he didn’t want people to think that we were dating. I didn’t fit in, I was constantly made fun of and treated like a moron. I was sitting on a curb outside of the high school when all the sudden… I wasn’t sad anymore. For a moment, eveything felt beautiful. Everything was calm, peaceful, and while I was sitting on a dirty curb with filthy music blasting behind me, I felt like I had someone sitting there beside me, someone that I didn’t even have to explain why I was alone or why I was upset. Someone that wanted to be there. Someone that knew what was going on, and didn’t look down on me for it.
It was a slow process for me, but I really haven’t felt God burning in my life until I went to Boston. I was afraid, in a bad situation, and it was the curb all over again. My family was across the country, I was living with a guy that treated me like crap, and I didn’t have a friend in the world. When I needed money for food I found it sitting on the sidewalk. I needed a job, I got two. I needed to be safe walking home in the dark late at night, no one ever hurt me. I got lost in the city and a bus driver took pity on me. The second time that happened, my boss came out to find me. I realized that no matter how bad things got, I had someone that was taking care of me.
It hurts not to have someone that shares my passion for God, but at the same time I resented anyone that tried to force me to love someone I didn’t even know. God made himself known to me and showed that he -did- care. That no matter how much I hurt, he understood. And it’s thanks to him that I’m starting to love just being me again. If I fail all my classes, it’s only because he has something better for me. If I go in a bad situation, maybe it’s so he can show me how nothing can stop him. Maybe one day I can be the mentor from a happy story for someone else. I can only hope.