bonar crump

bonar crump
husband - father - reader - runner - picker - grinner - lover - sinner

Sunday, April 10, 2011

How am I different as a person of faith?

by Martha Woodroof
Faith Unboxed - An unconventional conversation about God


I grew up awash in Pop’s doctrine of fundamental isolation; believing that I felt as alone as I did because that’s just how humans naturally feel. It continued through two marriages, as well as many relationships with lovers, friends, and colleagues. After I became a person of faith however, at some point, I noticed that it had simply gone; that I now lived as a human among humans.

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These days I’m able to accept (for the most part) that as a person of faith, I must slog through real life’s inevitable discomfort without attempting to dodge or deny its existence, doing what I need to do in spite of how discombobulated it makes me feel; learning, thinking, observing, caring, and making the best decisions I can. My partner, God, is the Whatever that is in me but isn’t of me., and It gives me the will and ability to rise above prejudice, fear, and personal anxiety in order to act and think in ways that are beyond my own self-interest. God binds me to others in common concern for a common good. I may hunger for protection from the discomforts of reality all I want within such a working partnership, but I leave it behind immediately once I expect God (or Rush Limbaugh or Einstein or MoveOn.org or my mother) to provide me with any such protection. God is my ability to participate in and, yes, enjoy, reality.

~ ~ ~

My faith, then, is what I do with my absolute acceptance that God is. My partnership with the great Whatever is not something I need to think about or figure out. Instead it is inherently a call to kinder, gentler, more truthful, more forgiving action than I am capable of on my own.


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