A Work in Progress

I have no idea if anyone will ever find this blog.
At the moment, I have no intentions of trying to promote it or generate traffic or suck up to other bloggers in hopes of piggybacking off of their success. I just felt the need for an outlet for many of the thoughts that I have been working through.

This is inspired by the often frustrating experience I have had reading blogs about Christianity. I struggle a lot with how I can best articulate my faith. I find myself inhibited with words that have almost been robbed of their power by flippant repetition and trite sloganeering. "Grace," "love," "relationship," "faith," are all used by many of my fellow Christians (often in a well-intentioned way) in a way that trivializes pressing questions, important dilemmas, and painful situations and events. I also read regularly from atheist and former Christian blogs, and I have been struck by the struggle to communicate that many of the Christians who feel the need to comment on these blogs experience. Sometimes these blogs provide caricatures and wildly uncharitable (to say the least) interpretations of the faith I cherish, but many times they also raise important questions that challenge certain views of God, Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc.

I don't want my faith to be defined by someone else. I also don't want to provide just another voice of argument. This isn't going to be about arguments for the existence of God or why the existence of evil isn't a problem. I am not here to make confident assertions. Faith is hard. I have a lot of questions, and so do many other people. This is my attempt to deal with them. Thinking and reflecting is crucial, and also incredibly rewarding. I cannot express how liberating it is to probe deeply into who God is and find myself freed from misguided assumptions that are often paraded as unshakable truths by some of my fellow believers.
I have been called to work out my salvation in fear and trembling, and that means questioning and being questioned. It means that I need to have humility and a sober appraisal of my own abilities. In the midst of questions, doubt, fear, I have also found joy in Jesus Christ. I simply want to express all of this in whatever way I am able, and hopefully it may resonate with others as well.