Accepting God

The rules of popular culture dictate that purchased goods and services will make us happy. This remains as a popularly accepted notion. For many Christians God remains the one breakout wonder, the greatest blockbuster, the hit of the season, the best show of the century. Believing in God is a wonderful experience. Many consider it to be the best part of their lives. God defies any specific designation, subject matter, target demographic. Faith sometimes feels like a push and pull game as it develops, as doubts are confronted and discounted. Believing in God, loving God, serving God requires a palpable spiritual development. There is no Hollywood type chemistry between God and his adopted children. The interaction is subtle. It does not happen how we want it to occur but it occurs how we need it to happen. I sometimes feel inadequate as I try to communicate with God, I sometimes feel a little shy. I sometimes feel inadequate wanting to be a servant of the Lord.

I wanted my Christian experience to reflect something that I understood, something that I had felt, something that I could always remember, something that would inspire me to always love, honor, and serve God. I wanted my Christian experience to provide something for me always to aspire to. I wanted my story to be universal, acceptable, entertaining. Believing in God starts with accepting something which is hard to explain, hard to visualize. Believing in God starts with accepting and proclaiming something very vague and yet something very tangible. God provokes reactions, God encourages prayers. I quickly understood the shortcomings of corporate media dominated life. Too much information and thought is premixed, pre-measured, and served to the population. Modern life is filled with anger, violence, frustration. The Christian experience, the stories about finding God presents a view of tenderness, mercy, forgiveness, hope which is lost in mainstream popular culture.

Being a witness for God somehow feels fresh, original. Being a witness for God somehow strengthens us as we explore questions of morality, intimacy, love as actions for the good of the community first instead of the good of the individual. God wants us to mature, wants us to seek wisdom, knowledge, patience, humility.

Accepting God, believing in Jesus Christ reflects the remnants of hope, truth, and integrity within our culture as morality and sexual attitudes are controlled and influence more by corporate bodies wanting to sell products than save souls, protect hearts.

Scientific thought often is easily manipulated to suggest that God is nonexistent or powerless or unsympathetic to man’s plight when there is a disaster natural or manmade. Educated and civilized popular culture becomes surprisingly primitive when bad things happen, blaming God, asking why did God allow this to happen. How easy it is to blame God than to blame man? How easy it is to blame God for earthquakes, droughts, tidal waves! How easy it is to forget the good weather, the sunshine, the long lazy summer days.

Being Christian is like being a film director at a film festival waiting for audience reactions, waiting for panel discussions while feeling happy with your film, confident in both your content and presentation, pleased to be at the festival, ready to leave, ready for solitude, silence, and prayer.