After two decades and one year of church activities, youth groups, choir practices, and mission trips, I have been wired to believing that in order to change the world, I need to sell all my possessions and move to Africa. It doesn't matter where in Africa, because all of Africa is just one giant place and one giant pit of poverty.
Read Moreall that glitters
I can be brash, insensitive, forceful, disrespectful, and incredibly arrogant. I can be really arrogant. For a long time, I let this interpretation of me go. People perceived it was that way, so I didn't bother correcting them. It was easier than the truth. Because while they were not wrong to think me arrogant, because I often am, they misunderstood the cause of it. It's not because I think I'm special. It's not because I think I'm better than anyone else. It's because I have felt so guilty and so ashamed of my past that I would do anything to cover it all up so that no one could see it.
Read Moreand my paralyzing fear of death
This week, Christina May Gibson and I are going to be posting some reflections about ego and pride. But before that, I wanted to share a short post with you and a brutally candid one at that. You see, I'm not the best Christian in the world. Because ...
I am terrified of Heaven.
Not the experience of Heaven. Not the opportunity to be in the uninterrupted presence of God. I'm excited and expectant for that moment in which the reality I know will be tabernacled by the Reality I want to know.
But I'm not ready for eternity. That is an unknown too great for me to be comforted by.
Often, the conversation in my mind begins amenably enough. I think about Heaven in the abstract, absolute sense. A Reality somewhat removed from this one, which functions as a destination in one sense but has important relation to the present.
But then my mind keeps going and I think about how I will one day cross from this life into that one.
I will be there.
And, most terrifyingly, it will be forever.
I know some people who are comforted by this and who think others must be too, because they repeat it as part of their evangelism model. "You'll get to be with God in Heaven forever."
Like it were a closeout sale and everything must go, so if you act now ...
My anxiety over eternity is so suffocating, I often fear death not because of what death means physically but because it breaks the clock.
Suddenly, there's no expectation or thing to look forward to. Time is gone. Now it's just forever and ever. The last line of the Our Father no longer and abstract heart-cry but a tangible actuality.
I know the theological heyday some could have with this, letting me know exactly how flawed my view is, how I'm seeing eternity wrong, how I really don't believe this, and in many ways, they'd be right.
But I cannot deny that eternity freaks me out.
It's not the comfort for me as it is for some people. It's nerve-wracking and troublesome. I have sometimes lost sleep over it. I begin to think about it and a sense of weight presses down on my brain.
Perhaps it's the fear of the unknown, but I trust God. Perhaps I'm afraid I'll get bored, but I doubt it.
There's just something about the eternality of Heaven that makes it strangely terrifying.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
I always have to do things backward.
Most Christians get in trouble because all they live for is Heaven and they abandon the world to Hell because they have their one-way ticket ready to go. I happen to be coming at it from the opposite end.
The Holy Spirit has a real sense of humor.
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After a lot of encouragement, I have a Facebook page now! You can like me here ...