Questions - Day 6

I'm struggling with what to write today. My Piece post a few days ago felt good, and it was more for me than for any of you. Yesterday felt almost like a cop out. Occurred to me while I was packing, I knew it could be bent to talk about peace, so up it went. Today I sit in the tech booth, on my last day at Veritas, scrolling Facebook and Twitter, searching for something to respond to. The pastor is talking about glory and wonder, which are some of my most favorite topics in church and theology. But none of my responses lead me to peace. 

I keep coming back to Facebook posts. I know it's too typical, but man, am I really starting to hate Facebook. I've thought about deleting it, or just deleting the app so I stop scrolling so often. I never feel good after reading my newsfeed. Dissension, anger, hate, complaining, and self absorption litter my screen. Facebook does not make me love people. I kind of hate them, to be honest, after I spend time there.

Going back to a different post a few days back, Facebook makes me blame everyone else for the world's problems. It leads me to look at everyone else, compare myself to them. I start thinking things like "I may not be helping refugees, but at least I don't hate Muslims." and "I can't believe there are people that stupid - why don't they understand what I understand?"

I know I talked a big game at looking at myself, how I am the problem. But the reality is, I suck at it. I'm so good at blaming everyone else. It's the politicians faults, it's the racists faults, it's ISIS's fault, it's the wider church's fault. I never look at myself. What is my responsibility? Josh's post Confusion echoed my heart exactly. I don't know what to do. I know something must be done, but what? So I give up. I blame everyone else. I put the responsibility on everyone but myself to do the right thing.
I promote unrest by doing nothing. I am an opponent to peace because I hide from the hard answers. It hurts too much to find the right answer. It shakes things up too much. It makes me someone that deep down I am afraid of being.

I've always heralded the CS Lewis quote:  "I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."

Currently, Christianity is making me very uncomfortable. God is requiring of me hard things. Things that make me look at me and not at others. Today, I don't have answers, I only have more questions. But on this step of the journey, that's all I have to offer.

25 Days for Peace is a cooperative blogging experiment between myself and five other artists, designed to explore the facets of peace, particularly centered around this season intended to experience the peace of Christ. Visit this page to see the other contributions to this journey, and like it to join with us in exploring what peace means.