Listen (Part 1)

It's hard to talk about this in mixed company, by which, I mean there are people who read this who know me very well and others who barely know me at all. But there's something all of you need to know. It's nothing terribly earth-shattering, and I hope it's at least relatable to some, or maybe most, of you.

I have a great deal of respect for those whose belief is not completely centered in Christ. More than that, I actually envy them a great deal. Not because it takes so much more faith to not believe than to believe, or any similar evangelical platitude. And definitely not because I secretly wish to live a life of rampant, unrepentent sin without consequence. I just want to be left alone, for God's sake. But apparently, exactly for God's sake, that's not an option for me.

Sometimes I desperately want the ridiculously obvious Meaning I find my world enveloped in to have another source. Sometimes I want to love my life, my family, my friends on their own merits. I want an absolute morality based in something other than the Absolute, to be perfectly candid. I'm so concerned for people to have a healthy, reasonable view of scripture; so I want to be able to deny its own significance in my life. I don't want Life and Light and Truth and Beauty to be God; I want them to be arbitrary, glorious anomalies in an otherwise absurd and meaningless universe. Honest, that's what I actually want sometimes.

I want God to leave me alone.

But, that doesn't separate me much from everybody else, does it?