Across the span of time and within every land there are people who have given up on believing in God. I believe that the decision to abandon faith is not made in haste, nor in a vacuum. I think that people have an idea of how God is supposed to be, how God is supposed to treat mankind in general and their own life in particular. Many of our thoughts and views of God come very early in childhood. I am not speaking about some type of formal religious teaching exclusively; such as Sunday School or Catechism. Everyday events in a child's life can enforce the teaching or mitigate it.
Life experiences are very powerful forces in our concept of God. Children that are encouraged and embraced as the gift they are to be the norm and not the exception. When that happens they can be guided through the turmoils of living that come to every person. They are nurtured and guided into a world that is at times filled with beauty and at the same time filled with unspeakable evil.
Due to circumstances in my formative and very impressionable times I began to believe that God had favorites upon the earth. If you or your family were lucky enough to be on the good list, you could expect good things. If you were not fortunate to be on the, good list, life was filled with unrest and turmoil. The turmoil in my life will be written about in later pieces. So, I began to imagine God as a being that had favorites and carried a big club.
As the turmoil and unrest continued to grow it also continued to feed my warped concept of God. There were certain reoccurring traumas that seemed to reinforce my concept even greater than the less stressful turmoils and sources of unrest. This, my concept of God, I carried on into adolescence and teen years.
The death of my brother and my perceived fragmentation of my parents following his death was the season of my deepest conviction of abandonment by God.
I will continue this for a while and try to fill in the blanks and make clear the time of my encounter with God Himself.
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