Today was a good day. I did pretty good on my NT exam and I got to do a course evaluation, in which I went off on another big rant about how Carmel could be so much better (to match the rant I wrote for Christian Life class). I'll think I'll give you "part 2" quickly. You'll recall that part 1 of my spiritual crisis was a frustration with my lack of relationship with God. Part 2 is a challenge of my beliefs about the Bible. A while ago I researched an apparent discrepancy in the Gospels, where Jesus casts the demons into the heard of pigs. Matthew reports two demon possessed men, while Mark and Luke have one. I couldn't reconcile the two accounts, therefore I currently believe it to be a plain factual error in the Bible. This raises all kinds of questions for me about the infallibility and inspiration of the Bible (though some people don't seem to be bothered by it), and it should be totally destructive to my Christianity, and particularly to my interaction with scripture. And yet (and here's the weird thing) I'm not really that bugged about it. The facts that I've tried so hard to meet with God and he just hasn't showed up (this is where part 1 comes back into the picture) coupled with my apparent rejection of the infallibility of scripture should be totally crippling my Christian faith. It's a twofold attack on my mind and my heart, powerfully challenging the fundamental reasons for my faith. And yet I don't really feel challenged. Despite God's utter absence from my sensory perception, I have no real doubt of his existence or goodness, and what I claim is a heavy blow against my trust in the Bible has really not shaken the way I study it or the way that (deep down) I still believe it. If these two behemoths cannot shake my faith, what will? All this reinforces my suspicion that I am, today and forever, irrevocably, irreversibly, incontrovertibly and fundamentally a Christian. I couldn't leave if I tried, and save by some cataclysmic revelation, I could never disbelieve this stuff. I'm sure that any psychologist could come up with an easy explanation for this - perhaps all my desperate longing has brainwashed me into a hopeless state of irrational faith. Or perhaps a good God is holding on to me, and he's not going to let go. In either case, the point is that I have arrived. I am a Christian in my core. I am a reckless, foolish, hopeless Jesus Freak, and I can't get out, so the only way to go is farther up and farther in. Oh God - God of my innermost soul, God of my heart and of my mind, God inescapable and unfathomable, God transcendent and God all-present, God just around the corner, and God in my breath, God outside my perception, yet etched on my soul, great God, good God, my God, just take me, I'm yours.

The rant referred to at the beginning was one of several I dished out around this time, all of them quite vague and unsubstantial, born out of a general restlessness and dissatisfaction. I get that way sometimes. I've thought a fair bit since writing this entry about whether my conclusion (that I will always be a Christian) is true. Of course I can't answer that, but I think what I'm expressing here is largely just a feeling I had at the time that everything what falling apart and I wasn't worried. Since then there have been times when I have been worried, so this post may be an overstatement. And yet in another way I suspect I'll always be a Christian in some form or another simply because that's what I'm used to and what's easiest for me, so as long as I can do so while maintaining my intellectual honesty, I think I will always be a Christian. Oh, and the one man/two men thing is no longer a problem for me - my dear friend Lucy explained it to my satisfaction. If you're interested in the explanation you can contact either me or he.