Touched by the presence of the Lord

While I was at the library the other day, I was interrupted from whatever internet browsing I was doing by a kindly seeming, middle-aged, Korean woman. She told me she'd felt called to come talk to me, like I was somehow open to what she had to say.

In a way, she had been right. I was open, I listened to her with my whole heart, which is probably why the experience ended up being so intense.

She started by telling me about an email her pastor sent her and some of the scripture he quoted, particularly a verse from Isaiah 60 about light in the darkness.

As we explored parts of the Gospels together, she had me understand how the Word of God, of Yahweh, was Jesus Christ and that He was the light in the darkness. And so on and so forth, Jesus died for our sins and so only through Him can I truly be forgiven and accepted into the arms of the Lord.

She told me about her 11 year-old son and reading scripture with him. Several times she interrupted herself to pull out a small, circular sponge like you would find in a makeup kit to use to wipe her nose of her allergies. And she cried. She cried for me, at the power of what she was saying, so strong was her belief.

While I truly did try to listen with an open heart, and even read aloud some of the scripture she passed in front of me, (John 6:44, Psalm 139), I cannot fully accept this sacrifice. God sent His only son, Jesus Christ, to absolve us of our sins so that His blood may show us the way to the throne of heaven. The part I cannot understand or perhaps cannot accept is why? And this is a very specific why in that I'm not questioning the motivation of why must He do this, but rather why must it only be this way?

To paraphrase Derrida, only I can be responsible for my life, and conversely, for my death.   But examining the divine sacrifice within this discourse, we come across an intersection of the responsibility that is uniquely of man and the grace of that which we call God.

As an immortal being, God is exempt from the kind of responsibilities faced by man. He is beyond being good, being understood, morality. Who does He answer to for His actions but Himself? So for Christ to die for us, to offer to take responsibility for us and for our sins, creates a symbol wherein God accepts responsibility for His own actions.

To me at least, it says, I made this what it is. It's my fault and so I must be the one to fix it. Your failings in my eyes are because of Me, so your salvation must also come through Me, through Jesus Christ.

This is why I am not Christian. My faith is not put in Jesus Christ. I do not trust Him explicitly and wholly. The way I view it, I answer to a higher power than that, creation, that eternal force of life that moves us forward. In less secular terms, I suppose many would call this God, but that is one thing I deliberately choose not to do. How can one fathom to name and so attempt to define that which is, was and will be? Only man.

"All other sins, stealing, killing, etc, are secondary." To what? To the greatest sin which is to fail to honor your responsibility to your creator. For according to Psalm 139:13-16, we were each formed even before our birth, seen and witnessed before life itself. I cannot refer to this as God though. It's not disrespect because to me, every act of creation, which is indeed every action, is or should be a celebration and honoring of the original creation.

At the end of our conversation -- a term I use rather loosely considering I said maybe a total of 10 words of my own in the course of something like 45 minutes -- this woman prayed for me. She prayed for the Lord to bless me in all I do and to give me strength, but also to give me strength in Him. Perhaps I need that strength, but not right now, not until I'm ready to accept it.

And I admit, I felt it, what she would have called the presence of God. It was a pressure in my head given to the intensity of the moment. Something I felt physically and made me tremble. But is that God? I struggle to name and describe it, so I'm not going to rationalize with some attempt at a scientific explanation, but is it God? And if so, which god? Which faith and belief has that kind of power except that which we give it?

If I were Pastafarian, I would say in that moment I was being touched by His Noodly Appendage (RAmen). I'm not mocking faith in questioning this, I'm searching for my own.

There was one other thing she said that really struck me. Religion is dead, she said, to believe in Christ is to believe in the living spirit. This as she urged me to find a church in my area, a Foursquare where I could find Christ.

It struck me as particularly serendipitous that I should draw the attention of this woman, because I still remember rather distinctly the conversation I had about a month ago when a man stopped me in Red Square up at Western.

"I could tell the Lord had opened you to hear my message."

Perhaps I am touched by the presence of the Lord. Touched so that I may stay open to these experiences and listen and experience the diversities of Faith across our world. Religion is dead, yes, but the spirit is very much alive.