I didn’t think I would reactivate this blog. To tell you the truth, I had actually forgotten about it completely. If you ignore your faith, it also makes sense that you would ignore a blog designed to express your faith. So here I am. It’s been a year and a half since my last post. But I’m back. There should be some accounting for where I’ve been, and that is what I will do here.
I just finished reading my previous blog post, which was from May 2014. It was a spiritual manifesto, the closest thing I have ever written to a summary of what I believe as a Christian. When discussing the concept of spiritual community in that post, I wondered openly about the possibility of finding authentic community outside of the church. Am I only a Christian because I fear loneliness and thus have a need for community? The past year has definitely answered that question. The answer, quite simply, is no. I have learned that one can be surrounded by friends and still have a yearning for Christ and his people. I have met many fascinating and intriguing people over the past year, the vast majority of them non-believers, and I count many of them among my circle of friends. They are the most intelligent and ambitious human beings I’ve ever encountered, and no conversation is short of stimulating debates on politics, history, and philosophy. And yet I have always felt that something is missing in the depth of my relationships with them. There are limits to how far one can go with people when they don’t share your spiritual assumptions. I came to miss the transparency, the emotional rawness of confessing community.
As you have probably concluded by now, I stopped going to church last year. My excuse is that I was too busy. In reality, I stopped caring about Christ. I attended a small group on campus half-heartedly in the first semester, but even that I chose to discard. Life became cluttered with things I had to do: social engagements, career exploration, networking, and the never ending avalanche of homework. I went to house parties with my colleagues seemingly every weekend. It was a great deal of fun, perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had in my adult life. The opportunity to meet all of these people from all over the world has been a real blessing. Simultaneously, however, I neglected Christ and I could feel myself fading spiritually. Without the fertile soil of community, the individual believer does not flourish; at least, this is my experience. At times I even downplayed or denied Christ as a way of adapting to my new environment. I became instantly uncomfortable whenever the topic of religion came up. Shockingly, I even told someone this summer that I “used to be religious.” Why would I say something like that? I can’t escape the conclusion that I actually meant it, that Christ had become an unwieldy article that I had chosen to discard. I could feel some kind of emptiness swelling inside of me, but I did not properly diagnose it until I returned to that place where I found my first true ekklesia: Spokane.
In August I drove over to Spokane for a short visit. As it happened, the MC was taking a trip to a lake in Idaho, and of course I joined in. Seeing my friends again – Isaac, Kristina, Evan, Whitney – stirred a remembrance of something inside of me. After so long, I could finally open up my heart to those that I knew would understand me. These are people who had walked with me in my darkness. They understood me on a level that few others could. The longing to know and be known is one of our deepest desires, and at that lake I recalled everything that I had lost in my first year in Washington DC.
When I came back to the capital this fall, I had a proper perspective born of reflection. I understand now what I did wrong last year, and why Christ faded from view. The gnawing thirst for meaning and significance had pushed me to find fulfillment in personal ambition and social acceptance. As a result, I experienced spiritual decay, a loss of passion for Christ, and another round of existential crisis as I found my life unmoored once again.
This changed early last month. I’ve found a new community in Redeemer Arlington, and God has graciously surrounded me once more with the fellowship of believers. The instant welcoming that I have received echoes what I experienced three years ago when I first set foot in Soma in Spokane. I have become part of a community group, or CG, and my passion for the Gospel has been rekindled. I’ve realized once again who I am, and that it is Christ himself – not my fear of loneliness – that calls me to the Christian walk. I know what I am in the eyes of Christ, that I am redeemed in spite of myself, and that no glory I can achieve can compare to the glory he has already purchased for me. Faith is the story not of being lost and found, but being lost and found and lost and found again. Every time we stumble and lose our way, the majesty of Christ calls us back. It is this that I hold to, and I look forward with great eagerness to see how the seeds of the Gospel are being sown in Arlington.
A Road to Emmaeus 