Theology of Recovery
I’m in a group with Christian men who are on the road to recovery from sexual sins: porn addiction, sex — love addictions, affairs, etc. I’m not going to tell the salacious story of my own crash and burn (at least not in this post), but crash and burn I did. One of the strange side effects of crashing and burning was freedom: freedom to live without masks, freedom to ask and examine questions about God in ways that my evangelical background NEVER allowed. I started thinking about things that before were taboo, thoughts like6
“What if there is no hell or heaven” (ala John Lennon :) )
“What if God loves everyone including Buddhists, radical Islamists, Atheists, etc. ?”
“What if he/she has even spoken to them within their religious traditions?”
I’ve decided to start writing about God, theology, recovery, and where these things intersect. I’m not a theologian and I’m not afraid of being called a heretic, so why the hell not?
So Fucking Presumptuous
Theology is the study of God. It’s a presumptuous idea to assume that finite people can understand a God we define as infinite, but we try anyway. We believe we can know some things from what he has told us, what he has shown us in Jesus, and by studying the universe — macro to micro. God has always accommodated our limitations, like a parent answering a 3 year old about where babies come from. The hard thing we face now is that we think we are soooo much smarter than the people in Genesis who imagined the world to be like a snow globe. We know a bit more, but I’m convinced that we still only see the tippy tip top of the iceberg which is God. “we know in part”, “we peer into a fogged up mirror”, we have snippets of the story. We have enough to know some things, but OMG there is so much we do not know.
So I am hoping I can put away my certainty, leave the theology books on the shelf, put away Sunday School notes, and think afresh about what God might have to say to us, his people, who are struggling to recover from the addictions, choices, and forces that have ruined our lives.
God and Scorched Earth
We are all damaged goods. Some of us have suffered damage to our lives and families, but the situation can be salvaged. Others are like the people going back to fire scorched areas where nothing is left. We’re starting over. That’s my situation. I set the fire that burned my down my house around me. Now I have found that I burned up a lot of my theology as well. Issues that I was afraid to talk about because of my Christian tradition, I can now investigate and speak my doubts out loud. I’ve already been kicked out of the Sanhedrin, and landed in the pub next to the my brother publicans and sinners, so I’m free to speak about my doubts and the things that bother me about what I’ve been taught. I don’t give a shit if someone labels me a heretic. I’ll put it after my name on my business card: “Allan Smith, adulterer, heretic, all around fuck up, and also dad, granddad, redeemed son of God”.
New Questions
When you’re standing on scorched earth you have new questions:
Who is God to someone like me?
Is God really like the person I’ve been taught He is?
I’m starting to not think so.Someone asked me if I still believe in God after everything I’ve been through. The surprising answer is “Yes! But maybe not the same God you believe in, or maybe I don’t think God is who you think she is”. Anyway crashing and burning gives a person a different outlook on life. I used to see life and God from the top of my wall, but now, like Humpty Dumpty, I’m looking at things from ground level. I used to afraid of falling off my pedestal, but I fell, and my life shattered, along with some of my beliefs. I survived, my faith survived too, but even with “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” it’s not going to look anything like pre-fall faith. And that’s ok.
