I was about to start this post
with, “I have not written in a while” but I realize that is redundant. What is
more important is why I haven’t written in a long time.
Over the last few months a
silence has crept over my soul. I slow, dark mist, a dark miasma of dread and
fear, like a fog on a marsh it has hang around for long. Nothing I do can
dispel this, well let’s call it what it is; fear.
Fear! Andrew Pacutho, afraid?
Those that know me will find this hard to believe and still some will
say, “but we are human, it happens” I find the timidity and fear as puzzling as
most and the reasons a little confusing.
For the first time my fear does
not come from outside but from within. Not within my spirit or my soul but within
a community that i have called home and family for the longest time. It’s like being of a different opinion gets
you cast into the pile of the weird believer or worse backslider or labeled with
something akin to you don’t know what you say and if you were plugged right it
would all make sense.
While I have argued this out with
friends close to me I still find the idea that I cannot be broken and messed up
in church totally wrong. It’s like going to a hospital and being stigmatized for
being sick. There are so many questions
and so few answers. The usual mantra of “God’s word has all the answers” feels
hollow. Otyooo!!! I just blasphemed or something right? If the teacher cannot
make plain the text, then the text, or the teacher or the student has a
problem. I suspect it’s either the student or the teacher.
But more than that is the fear to
speak out against perceived wrong things in church because suddenly you are or
have been made to feel unsure of yourself. You can’t be right when you are the only one
who seems to see things a certain way right? They can’t all be wrong. Can they?
If you are wrong, how wrong are you and must you keep shouting if you are that
wrong? After all if you were right other people would stand with you right?
These questions can drive a man
insane. I am still searching for the answer, praying that a light would shine
in this fog but until then I shall sit in the back silent and do battle with my
soul.
I shall leave church alone….and
hopefully church will leave me alone…for a while.
