Questions of Faith

When people say they are struggling with their faith, it often means that they are struggling to find faith--to believe. They have lost it somewhere along the way, usually due to trauma, heartache, some sort of unexplained loss.  I'm quite the opposite.  I am struggling with my faith, because I have too much faith.  I can't seem to exclude beliefs in order to favor one over the other.  This struggle was intensified last week, when my spiritual leader came out of the closet as an atheist.  He admitted to being an atheist for the last twenty years.  How is someone who does not see any God, lead someone like me who sees God everywhere?

With a breaking heart, I have decided to leave a community where I had found a home for several years.  When I first started attending this spiritual gathering, we focused on Christian beliefs, but then also incorporated wisdom from other religions.  It was a perfect fit for me as I believe God is too big to be contained by one religion and that there are multiple pathways to salvation as long as you strive to do good in the world and love God in whatever form you see Him.  I personally choose to live my life as Jesus would, because I believe He gives us the best model of what it means to be God-like.

Unfortunately, this place I had called home, a place that spiritually recharged me every week, under the leadership of its minister has moved closer and closer to using only science as it's guide for living.  I am a science-person.  I understand science gives us great wisdom, but I believe that everything we learn through science ultimately come from God.  And still even with the spiritual intervention in the world of science, I feel the presence of more in the world beyond what we can research.  I've felt the spirit move in me many times, and I can't deny that.  I've felt the divine through miracles I've experienced, times of solitude in nature, and through meditation.  I'm extremely energy sensitive and can feel my own spiritual energy channeling through my chakras when I take time to meditate on this.  I know the science of our bodies running on electrical impulses, but when you feel waves of energy pulsing through your body when you stop to listen, this is definitely more than science.

I'm sad to leave a place where I could talk about God and the idea of spiritual energy in the same place, a place where you were welcomed as an atheist, a Christian--gay/straight--it didn't matter.  I think it will be a struggle for me to find a new home, but I need a place where I can still be lead as a Christian, even if I'm this stumbling, overly-accepting version of what it means to be a child of God.