My Brief Foray Into Christianity Has Ended: A Confession.

Confession time: I’m hanging onto my “Christian faith,” such as it is, by a thin thread. Teen Challenge was a therapeutically and spiritually illuminating time for me, and I met many wonderful and influential people.

Nonetheless, I have now spent twelve months imploring God for a confirmation; something that would clarify and solidify not just the reality of his existence and nature, but by extension establish that “personal relationship” which is so incessantly flouted by other believers.

These things have not happened. And I have tried goddamned hard, pardon the french. At most I have felt what the poet Goethe eloquently articulated as “blessed longing.” It’s as if this personal God may exist, but he’s calling from far off over a desolate and windswept waste. In times of duress my longing manifests (metaphorically) as a hand outstretched in the darkness. But no one has taken hold. Putting it mildly, this to me is troubling. There seems to be nobody there.

By “confirmation” I do not mean an unambiguous theophany or mystical episode. Indeed, something so overwhelming would eradicate the need for faith altogether.
But given that God is described as personal, and that a relationship with him is presumably possible—provided that one approaches him via channels prescribed by the orthodoxy—is it so unreasonable to expect something that goes beyond a warm fuzzy feeling whilst sitting in a pew? My experiences at church have left me feeling awkward and alienated. My attempts at prayer feel absurd when I reflect upon the logic of petitioning an omnipotent being for personal favours. I am sickened by the hypocrisy I see in myself and others; particularly those who profess an intimate collusion with the all-mighty: “This is God’s opinion on this matter.” Most of all, I cannot help but feel morally outraged when I am told that God loves us—notwithstanding the children born with HIV, the torture, the rape, the genocide, the bigotry and avarice that floods this broken world.

I want to believe that goodness lies at the heart of things. But the Christian explanations I’ve encountered lately have begun to seem merely like filmsy excuses garbed in pseudo-sophisticated theological jargon.