Who are you?

Scot McKnight once wrote that reputation is how the world sees you, and that identity was how God sees you.  At times I am able to see things (including myself) as God does.  Certainly I'm more likely to view myself in the world's eyes.

The most frustrating part of the world's eyes is that the view is incomplete.  If someone were to ask me the question "Who are you?"  I would have a rather half-witted answer.  I could state some hobbies, some physical attributes, some personal history.  But the reality is that, chances are, I have very little information on the subject.

I had always said that faith wasn't about religion.  That it wasn't about church or having friends or being a good person or feeling good about yourself - that it was about a relationship with God.  But then I began praying a dangerous prayer.  I prayed for a real relationship with God.  A relationship like those I had always read about in the Bible.  A relationship like what is offered from the pulpits across the world every Sunday.  The one that seemed so great between the disciples and Jesus.  It was then that God had sent me away from home.

A lot has occurred since I left home in June of 2005.  Many little things, some big things.  The easiest way to sum it up, is that all the things like church and friends and being a good person and feeling good about myself is all but gone.  At this point, I know that where I am are a part of the answer to my prayer.  If I were to have known the physical implications of my prayer, I probably would have still asked - but I'm not certain that I would have had I known how hard and confusing things would be.  Perhaps ignorance is, at times, a blessing ;) .

With everything being stripped away, my faith has become more dependent on the relationship, rather than the religious environment.  And with that relationship, what is my identity has slowly begun to be more apparent.  

The hard thing is that I now have a mind that doesn't always agree.  A voice that isn't always heard.  I get frustrated with things in American Christian Culture.  I get venomously cynical at times.  I'm apt to say things that people may not like.  I'm inexcusably imperfect.

But I'm more real now than I ever have been - more real than some people will ever be.

That is why I decided to start this blog.  Chances are, no one will ever read it.  Maybe some day a lot of people will.  I would love it if people became interested in what I have to say (even if it is to laugh at me).  Perhaps if some people would, they would learn to look at things differently.  Maybe a light will go on somewhere.  But really, that isn't the point.

The point is this:

Whether anyone knows it or not, I exist.