I’m Thinking About: Faith

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb.11:1).

I’ve been thinking a lot about faith today. Actually I think a lot about faith most days. I became a Christian when I was in high school, but it’s not something I talk about a whole lot. To me, faith is a very private thing…or at least it has been. I don’t know why exactly I feel that way. Maybe it was the general sense of confusion and depression that swept through my life right around the same time I found God for the first time. Maybe it’s because my gift for gab, my clever turn of phrases and my biting wit, do not easily translate into being articulate about the nature of my relationship with Jesus Christ. But it goes deeper than that.

I live a life of countless contradictions and endless hypocrisy. I’ve done things in my past I’m not proud of. Actually, I do things in my present that I’m not proud of. It’s only recently, when I’ve reached a certain sense of clarity about my life with bipolar disorder, that I’ve gotten to a place where I can forgive myself for some of my manic behavior. There are some things I’ve done in a manic mindset that I would never do when healthy. I spent years trying to avoid any sense of blaming my disorder for anything. It’s only been in the past few months when I got to a place where I can say: “No, okay, that wasn’t really me.” And this isn’t me trying to avoid accountability. I know that I still have to deal with the consequences. I have to deal with the failed relationships, be they with friends, girlfriends or in this case, God. This one though, is one I’m working on repairing. I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to know that God loves me through all my faults.

Let me stop here for now and end with a disclosure: I’m not saying that you have to believe what I believe. A lot of my family is Jewish and so are many of my friends. Some of my friends are Muslim. I respect all faiths. I’m just saying that it helps me to believe in a loving God who forgives me of my trespassings and to know that there is something out there greater than myself.