It’s not that I doubt.  It’s that I don’t need anymore.  I don’t need you to be exactly as described in the bible.  I don’t need The Trinity … The Creation … The God … The Jesus … The Holy Spirit all as described and defined.  I don’t need to end a prayer with “in Jesus’ name”, I don’t need to say “I believe in … “ as The Creeds demand.  I don’t need to praise you, to seek your forgiveness, to look for sin, or even to worship you.  I don’t need to bow down to you, or to be saved by you, or to do stuff that others say I should when “in your presence”.

Here I am, on an iPad, in bed, specs on top of my head … no suit and tie.  Not very much at all right now.  And all that stuff I was brought-up with doesn’t work for me like it did.  Did it work for the disciples after they met and knew you?  After you lived in them before and after.  I wonder if they needed to be religious.

What’s that … ?

No – I like celebrating your birthday (even if it is just the official one).  But I can’t do all that bowing and scraping anymore.  And I hate the killing bit three months later each year.  I don’t need all the blood anymore.  Don’t need the sacrifice.  Can’t agree it was all about my sin.  Can’t see how sin drives it all.  Can’t see why that would be your driver.  It seems to me it was about so much more.

Yesterday I was driving home in the dark along twisty narrow roads.  I wiped the windscreen of condensation (I thought) and got a great big greasy smear.  Right in my line of sight. Each time a car approached it’s lights lit up that smear and I struggled to see. I was driving hunched down looking under, over, around that smear.  Not the recommended way to drive – particularly at night along twisty narrow roads.  

Sin for me is like that more and more.  Gets in the way.  Becomes the focal point.  Blocks out everything else.  Has me living this half-life.  Half my life.  Is that not the greatest “sin”? To live half a life and not the life I could have lived if … ?

That’s why it makes less and less sense to me that you were begat of God to be a dead man walking.  All to save me from something I would never have even done had I not been told I was doing it, had done it, and would do it the rest of my life.  That is some mad scientist type scenario.  Because if I will always sin – that is not free-will.  That is pre-ordained scripting.  We might have built-in a little improv along the way – but I am still living within criteria set by others: I will sin and I will need forgiving.

See that little sneaky? That little “need” … ?

We can’t seem to help ourselves.  Always the reason for sin is need.  Except love doesn’t.  And if I sin and need forgiveness I can never love like you.  Needlessly and unconditionally.  And if I cannot love like you, how can I ever walk in faith with you free of need.  And if I can never walk in faith free of need … I think you missed a trick with the crib and the cross.  And I know you didn’t.  So I think we have and we do (missed a trick, that is).

I think it was about so much more.  I think it was about something so much simpler.  I think it was about love living beyond death.  About love which is so much more (and so much less) than we prefer.

I remember the tendrils of evil creeping towards you.  I remember you being in great love danger.  I remember creating a shield between you and them as you slept.  Slapping back those tendrils.  Physically keeping you in this world of love and light.  And winning.  And then I slept.  And in the morning you said seven words: “What are you going to do now?”

And without that loving living voice I wouldn’t have then.  Maybe not ever.  But I did.  I did what I never dared.  What I would not have done.  And that was not in the bible.  That was not worship.  That was not praise.  That was not sin and forgiveness.

That was personal, private and gutsy.

That is why I Am you.

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