Welcome to the Patchwork Blog! I hope you enjoy reading my random thoughts about life, Jesus and the freedom he offers.

Monday 8 November 2010

Newton's Cradle



I can remember being fascinated with Newton's Cradle the first time I saw one. I think I was a teenager. I couldn't drag my eyes away from the steel balls as they swung back and forth.

I am beginning to feel like that Newton's Cradle. My thoughts swinging wildly back and forth from one extreme to the other. One moment I think my faith in God is returning and things will go back to normal. The next moment I am back to thinking 'there is no God'. I don't know what I think any more. I am hoping that the swinging will stop eventually, like a Newton's Cradle stops eventually.  I guess I am impatient. I want it to stop now.The constant movement is making me nauseous.  I want to know what I believe. It feels daft not knowing what I believe about something. I used to be so convinced by the intelligent design argument. I couldn't see how anyone could possibly believe that there was not a Creator behind our universe. It all seemed so obvious to me that he was there, and that he loved me.

Somehow that certainty has gone. Most of the time I can't believe that there is a God. It seems ridiculous to think there is a God. But then I will see a beautiful sunset and that inner voice that I always thought was God, starts to speak to me about a Creator God and so the steel ball of my beliefs swings back the other way again.

I think I have spent so much of my life being told what I think by others, at school, at nursing school, at church that I now can't easily work out what I think about things. I want someone to tell me what I believe. I want them to tell me what is happening to me. But I know that to really find peace I have to do that for myself.  I have to listen carefully, and non-judgementally to the different voices. I need to give myself space to work it all out. I have still been going to church most Sundays but now I wonder if I need space from that, space from voices telling me what a 'good Christian' thinks and believes. I think I need quietness and silence is something I have always run away from. I think I need to start to listen to the silence.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this! I'm glad to have found your blog, I've gone through a similar place as you. Of course, you got out of the church but still have your doubts. I've stopped believing entirely yet I still work for the church!

    I understand what you mean about swinging back and forth from belief to unbelief. I went through that a lot over the past ten or so years. I would cry out to God in despair to make himself known to me ("if you seek me you will find me, if you seek with all your heart") but I never heard anything from him. I was seeking with all my heart but I never found anything.

    I hope that you can come out of this period a little bit sooner than I did (you're already well on the road to, openly questioning rather than keeping it all in as I did) but know that whatever happens the journey is just as important as the destination.

    I look forward to reading your blog!

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  2. i just read your blog. I really enjoyed reading it and will follow it. I hope things sort out for you soon.

    I think I feel scared a lot of the time about loosing faith. I am scared that maybe it is all really true I will go to hell etc.

    I have a friend who also went through a similar thing a couple of years before me. It helped having someone else to talk to about it.

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  3. I too had the 'swinging experience' if you pardon the expression! I found it was only when I let go of the need to know what I believed that the extremes of swing started to slow. The expression 'Let go and let God' comes to mind. If you have to force a belief, what does that say about the existence of God? If he / she /it is a reality and wants you to believe, then he /she /it should help you.
    Being an ex-minister myself, I found it particularly hard to give up fighting to find the truth as I had been trained to communicate The Truth to everyone else! Last advice - don't try and hurry the process - just go with the flow and ride the emotional ups and downs without taking either too seriously as neither is a permanent state!

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