I’ve been thinking about my approach to faith and how I am unsure of anything anymore, and I’m wondering how to describe it. Am I confused? I don’t think so. Confusion implies some level of discomfort, and I’m remarkably mellow about this. Perhaps my attempts to learn mindfulness have taken hold enough that I’m simply noticing and wondering—exploring the possibilities. I can be obsessively curious, but this doesn’t even feel like that. It’s more of a happy, childlike curiosity that leads to exploration than an obsessive search. I’m motivated but not driven, now that I no longer believe in eternal damnation if I don’t get it exactly right.
We create God from our insecurities—John Calvin certainly did. If we believe a perfect God must require perfect adherence to a minutely defined code, that sounds more like anxiety talking than a honest assessment of reality. If God is at all like a loving human parent, then God appreciates and loves our sloppy attempts to please him and give him refrigerator-art-worthy scrawls. God has lots of magnets and a universe-sized refrigerator to put them on.
