Reflections at Year's End

I haven't yet read the conclusions of Ryan Bell's "A Year Without God". But I have appreciated all of his posts throughout the year. They have challenged me, angered me, inspired me. I have found much solace in his skilled presentation and intellectual honesty in asking some of the questions we would often rather avoid.

Mr. Bell, if you ever read this, I thank you. And if you ever happen by a certain burg in Northeastern New Mexico, the coffee's on me.

I wanted to write these reflections prior to reading Bell's, because I want them to be free of the color I might find in his. I admittedly have not read many of these atheist/humanist authors, and have little interest in doing so, but that doesn't mean that I don't find validity in it.

So, introduction aside, here are my year end thoughts, jumbled as they may be:

The first verse of the Bible begins, "In the beginning, God...". Proceeding through 807,361 words in 66 books of the canonical Scriptures, it ends with "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen". (Rev. 22:21).

In the beginning, God... In the end, grace. Something to think about, and something that has had deep and profound meaning through the year, as I watched some people dear to me struggle with some difficult, life altering realities that I will not discuss in depth here because it is simply too soon.

This was a very, intensely painful year for me. But then growth often is. I have shed a lot of tears in the past 360 days, and as the year winds down, I find myself wondering if the current quiet is a genuine peace or merely the calm before the storm. I found myself withdrawing increasingly inside myself because of genuinely feeling that I lacked a strong support group.

And through it all I found comfort in the words of Mr. Bell. Not because I agreed with some of the explorations that he made, but because I highly respect anyone who is willing to step so far outside their comfort zone in order to examine who they personally are. For everything I endured, I am sure it paled in comparison to some of his struggles. And, sadly, it showed some of the inadequacies of "traditional" evangelicalism.

And it was in that climate that I felt compelled to renounce evangelicalism. When I saw, for a second year in a row, the media centered on the shooting of an unarmed person of color, it called into question whether there was anything left worth redeeming in today's church. I've long struggled within around the conflict between the evangelical gospel and the social gospel, which gets you branded a liberal, a communist, or worse. And in the course of renouncing evangelicalism, I had to question whether I was, indeed, renouncing the church.

But there was something in that: Christ loves the church enough that He gave himself for her. That means, for better or worse, my struggle is not against the church, no matter how imperfect she may be.

In the beginning, God. In the end, grace.

Personally, this was the year that I realized that any aspirations to the American middle class are gone. That I can't pour enough money into my education to make that happen, and that it's done. And that I should learn to be comfortable with what I have, because it likely will not improve much.

After much bitterness, I'm surprisingly OK with that. Of course it helps that, in addition to my small income streams elsewhere, I am doing something I truly, genuinely enjoy.

This has been a truly special year on many fronts. I will post more between now and year's end, but cannot help going back to the discovery above: in the beginning, God... In the end, grace.