Serious Doubts About the Nature of God

This is a hard piece to write. For those who know me, truly KNOW me, you know that I have sought for a long time to better know God. And when I started this blog, one of the things I resolved was to be honest, even when that was brutal, even when that was difficult. I spent a lot of Sundays standing in church, in pain, truly feeling the fault was ME because the pain was never evident in those around me. Until I started blogging honestly and openly and found that a strong number of folks felt the way I did, but thought everyone around THEM was "faking it".

I do not attend charismatic fellowships, because God made it abundantly obvious to me years ago that material "blessings" (as the world sees them) would never be mine. I spent enough years being accused, usually implicitly, but on occasion explicitly, of a "lack of faith" that I decided that a fellowship that insulted me was really not living out Jesus' words. If you knew me at all, you'd know a "lack of faith" has never really been a concern.

But I find myself increasingly trying to fit in in a world where I quite clearly DON'T. The mission field doesn't want me, ministry doesn't wand me, Fortune 500 companies don't want me, and no matter how much I try, I cannot launch my own business successfully. Materially, my life has been one of the most monumental, magnanimous failures of recent years. I simply CANNOT find my niche. And it doesn't work in the 9 to 5 environment, as I increasingly become bitter and dissatisfied to the point where I must change environments, a condition that pretty much everyone in my sphere of influence has been quick to blame on ME.

All of this has led me to seriously doubt the "hands on" God I have so often been led to believe in. I try to serve, but am rejected at every turn, even when my attempts of service are so far removed from leadership that one could not attribute my being outcast to a lack of spiritual development (cleaning the church, putting together bulletins, establishing a church library -- all ministries I have attempted only to be rebuffed at with no explanation). And so I attempt to start a ministry of service outside the church, but again cannot obtain traction. And all of the apologetics in the world, all of the theologians in the world, cannot properly explain why after a quarter century of service, I am no closer to ministry than I was the day I accepted Jesus.

Make no mistake about it: I am certain, with 100% certainty, that God cares enough to ensure that His children will not starve. But beyond that, I am really beginning to question whether God is in it, or WE are in it.

In asking those questions, many Christians doubt my faith, and in an ironic twist, it HINDERS my attempts to serve, my attempts to find some sort of niche in this world. But I've found a lot of fellow Christians asking those questions, and I believe that it is imperative that the church begin answering them.

I no longer claim to know God's future for me; it's becoming abundantly clear that ministry is not it. But I have to wonder, if He saved me, why He would save me without a purpose. And if there IS a purpose, why I would spend most of my life in futility trying to find it.

I was asked by an atheist why I continued to believe in God. Sadly, outside of empirical experience, I had no answer. I am as certain as I have ever been about the existence of God; I am just beginning to seriously question whether a lot of folks are lying to us about the NATURE of God!