Have you ever wandered off and realised that you had no idea where you were? The wide range of emotions you experience when you realise that you’re lost is fascinating. Depending on where you’re lost or the circumstances leading up to your disorientation, you might have a sense of excitement. Adrenaline begins to pump as you consider all of the opportunities you have to explore your unfamiliar surroundings. Other times, discovering that you’re lost can lead to sheer terror. Like the time you were walking through the shopping mall with your mom and you walked by the toy store. After locking eyes with the new X-Man action figure, you turn around to realise that your mom has continued walking and is no longer in front of you and you’re surrounded by a crowd of people you don’t know. In that moment, a palpable sense of terror overcomes you and you do the only thing you know to do – cry. Loudly. Hoping that your mom hears the familiar noise and comes back to rescue her child from his treacherous circumstances. No matter what the situation, wandering off and getting lost are an unavoidable part of our lives.
And personally, I kind of like it. When I was
learning to drive, my mom absolutely hated getting in the car with me. Not
because I was a bad driver (at least not in my opinion), but because a
car ride was never just a car ride with me. If we were driving to the grocery
store, I would always end up turning down a random street to discover where it
led. I love to get behind the wheel and roam all over God’s creation. I cannot
tell you how many times I have ended up discovering curious new places that I
never knew existed by simply wandering around.
One of my favourite wandering experiences was
just a few years ago when I was on a road trip with my friend Troy to a
festival in North Carolina. We had been camping out in the foothills of the
Smoky Mountains. One day when Troy had gone to grab lunch across the
campground, I had the awesome idea to hop in his car and go for a quick spin.
So, without giving it another thought, I grabbed the keys and took off up the
remote mountain highway. After driving for about twenty minutes, I came to the
most stunning rest area that overlooked the historic mountain towns in the
valley beneath. For the next hour, I sat at the overlook gazing at the
splatters of colour that dotted the horizon around me. I was awestruck.
My mountaintop experience quickly came to an
end as my cell phone began to ring. It was Troy wondering where in the heck I
had taken his car. I couldn’t believe his audacity – calling me and
interrupting this sacred moment! After he hung up, I took one last survey of
the magnificent work of divine art and reluctantly got back in the car and made
my way back down the mountain to our campsite.
These
are the sorts of experiences that we would never get to have if we were not
willing to wander off the beaten path every now and then. For me, it’s almost a
compulsive tendency. I love exploration and the sense of adventure that comes
with deviating from a set course of action. Some may see this as a weakness.
Others may diagnose it as ADD. I, on the other hand, have come to embrace it as
a gift. It’s because of my propensity to meander that I continually have new
opportunities to find and be found. Allowing myself to wander off into the vast
jungles of religion and spirituality has often led to me stumbling upon life
altering new ways of thinking, living, and being.
What’s really ironic, however, is that along
with the gift of wandering, I have long sensed a calling from God to be a
Pastor – a spiritual shepherd of sorts. (God really does have a sense of
humour!) How could these two giftings fit together? Actually, I have
discovered, quite well. Too often in Christianity we equate wandering with
negative categories like eternal damnation, deception, and going ‘astray’. We
have often stigmatised those who wander from our group as weak and easily
deceived. But what if we’ve been wrong? What if one’s tendency to go wandering
off is truly a gift? What if the driving force beneath the curiosity that leads
a person to wander off the beaten path is not immaturity, but the wild,
untamable Spirit of God, drawing them into the foliage to be refined, to
discover fresh insights, and pioneer a new way forward for a new group of
people?
In my disorientation, I have been forced to
attune myself to the gentle breeze of God’s Spirit and allow myself to be moved
into new, unexplored territories. Sure, it’s scary sometimes. Uncomfortable
most of the time. But it’s always rewarding.
Many
who watch my spiritual journey from a distance have consigned me to the
category of ‘lost’, as if that were a bad thing. But it’s only when we allow
ourselves to get lost that we can have the opportunity to find and be found.
Many people in our churches take great pride in the fact that they’ve been
‘found’ by God and firmly plant their feet into the ground, refusing to move.
We often look at those people, the unmovable pillars of our community, as
valiant and honourable. We admire their lack of questions and uncertainty as wise and desirable. Many of us desperately seek to be people who ‘stand firm’,
which really just means we pretend we know it all because, if we’re honest, we
know that no one who thinks they’ve got life figured out actually has
anything figured out. Many people spend their lives gripping on to the
certainty and satisfaction of being the 'found ones' and miss out on the vast world of possibilities that there is to explore.
Being confident in one’s faith is not a bad
thing. That’s not at all what I am suggesting. But what I am saying is that
those who are the most confident are often those who don’t have any fun.
They’re the ones who stay in the backyard, just like mom told them, instead of
going to explore the make-believe lands on the other side of the fence. If
they’re not willing to explore beyond the realm of their safety, certainty, and
comfort, they will never know if their fantasies are true.
In our increasingly interconnected world
(thanks to social media), more and more people are discovering the thrill of
exploring the wide array of ideas, beliefs, practices, doctrines, and
spiritualities that exist within our world. Many people are leaving the safe
confines of the faith of their upbringing and are roaming the streets, looking
for and often discovering, new and innovative ways of expressing their devotion
to God. This isn’t a symptom of unfaithfulness but is, I believe, a movement of
God’s Spirit. As a new generation of Christians are taking to the streets of
the world, looking for signs of God’s movement in the most unlikely and
unexpected places, we are discovering that the God we worship is much bigger than
we once expected. That Jesus is actually ‘alive and active’ as the Apostle Paul
says in the book of Ephesians, in places we never thought he would show up.
Too often in
Christian contexts we talk about God and our faith in him as if we have it all
figured out. We value certainty and clarity. We can quickly name off a list of
attributes that describe who we believe God to be: omnipotent, sovereign,
omnipresent, holy, righteous, just, and so on. We profess our beliefs about God
and life with boldness, believing that we have arrived at an understanding of
capital ‘T’ Truth that no one can deny. You’ve been there, haven’t you? I spent
a good number of years in this space and it was a great place to be. Life
seemed to be so clear. My direction was certain. My beliefs were settled. The
Bible said it, I believed it, and that settled it.
This worked well for me for some time. But
then, life happened.
It doesn’t take much to shake up the snow
globe of our lives a make everything that once seemed so clear incredibly
blurry. Relationships. Family drama. Doubts. Conflicts. Questions. Growth.
Change. Pain. And it’s in the dust up of life’s circumstances that we often
find ourselves stumbling off the path that was set before us and by the time
the dust begins to settle, we find out that we’re not in Kansas anymore. The
things we once thought we knew are now in question. The way we thought life
worked no longer proves to be true. These times of disillusionment are both
terrifying and exhilarating. On one hand, we get to explore and experience life
in fresh ways. On the other hand, nothing makes sense anymore. We begin to find
some of things we were taught about God to be questionable at best, or else
downright untrue. This not only can lead us to spiritual vertigo, but also a
great amount of pain and distrust for the people, systems, and structures that
failed to prepare us for the reality of life.
What are we supposed to do when our faith
seems to fail us? When our religion runs counter to the reality that we
experience in everyday life? What happens when the pat answers that once made
so much sense now begin to seem uneducated, ill informed, and archaic? What are
we to do when we seem to grow out of God? Or at least the understanding of God
that we grew up with?
It’s questions like these that have led me to
write Nomad. The Christian world is filled with books, blogs, and
curriculums that claim to walk with us through the ‘difficult questions’. They
seek to help defend a particular version of the faith. They have a destination
in mind from the start. I have been through most of those books. I have read
most of those blogs. I have studied the curriculums. But through it all, I have
discovered that what I am seeking is not answers to my questions. I have come
to believe that questions of this magnitude can probably never be definitively
answered. That's why humans continue to ask the same questions over and over
again in every generation. We’ve never really found the answers, despite the
claims and convictions of many religious groups.
Instead of answers, what I have often yearned
for more than anything are for companions in my wondering, those who would be
open and honest with their thoughts, struggles, and experiences, and wouldn’t
be afraid to delve deep into the mysteries of faith and life with me. Over the
years, I have been blessed to have had many such friends in my life. But even
still, I have often felt like a stranger. Like I was the only one who spent
more time asking questions than seeking answers. Like I was the only one who
didn’t quite fit in with anybody in my church. Like I was the only one who felt
like a sojourner in the midst of a vast crowd of people who seemed to have
already found answers to the questions that continually surfaced within my
heart. When I began blogging about my struggles and questions a few years ago,
I was surprised to find that I wasn’t alone after all. That hundreds of others
around the world were experiencing the same feeling of homelessness in the
Church. Many of them reached out to me weekly through my blog and we began to
form a tribe of hopeful wanderers through social media.
It is my hope that Nomad will serve, in
some degree, as a voice of empathy to all of my fellow nomads who never seem to
be able to find a place to call home. I hope I am able to put into
words some of your deepest thoughts. Not because I am especially wise or
insightful, but because your thoughts have been my thoughts too. I hope that as
you read this blog, my words will resonate with the vagabond spirit of many in
my generation.
Over the past
decade as I have traversed through life as a Christian, I have come face to
face with these harrowing questions and have struggled to find answers like so
many other young people of faith. My story and struggles aren’t unique. They
aren’t new. And I am certainly not pretending to be an expert theologian or
spiritual teacher who has any absolute answers to these questions. Instead, I
am simply one man who is trying to find my way in this wilderness that we call
life.
The first time I stumbled on Jesus in an
unexpected place was during my freshman year in Bible college. After growing
restless in our search for a church to call home, a couple of friends and I
decided that we’d go rogue and explore some faith communities that weren’t
listed on our school’s ‘Recommended Churches’ list. On our first Sunday, we
decided to go to a church that was just a few blocks away from our school on
the same street. We had heard rumours that they had ‘abandoned the Gospel’ and
so as we entered the old, stone church building, we were all a little nervous.
No one was sure what to expect. We walked in to the colourful sanctuary and
were energetically greeted by the ushers who escorted us to a pew near the
front of the nearly packed sanctuary. The congregation was made up of men and
women from all ages, colours, and backgrounds. In the pew behind us sat a
large, African American man who was clearly homeless. In front of us, to our
chagrin, was a well-dressed, middle class lesbian couple. As soon as we
realised that this was one of those kinds of churches, we understood why
our school had removed it from its list of recommendations. Surely the Spirit
of God couldn’t be at work in a place like this. The service began with singing
a few popular Evangelical worship songs, which struck me as strange, because
these people weren’t supposed to be real Christians.
After
the worship set was completed a peppy, young white woman with a big Bible
approached the pulpit. This was their pastor. A woman. Talk about a
shock to a couple of fundamentalist-leaning Bible college freshmen. She opened
her Bible and began to preach from Isaiah 58 – a passage about social justice.
Of course. But as we sat through the message, it became clear to me that this
woman was deeply rooted in Jesus. She loved God, knew her Bible, and preached
with a passion that would give any Evangelical minister a run for their money.
As she concluded her sermon, my heart melted with conviction as I reflected on
her message: God calls us to live the Gospel not only with our words, but in
the way we treat the poor, oppressed, and marginalised. This message was rooted
in the Bible. She referenced Jesus about eight times in the course of her
sermon. I felt the tugging of the Spirit on my hardened heart. This was not
supposed to be happening. I was not supposed to be sensing the Spirit of
God at work in a place as theologically skewed as this. Or was I?
After the service ended, we were invited by
an elderly couple sitting in the pew next to us to join them downstairs for
coffee and pastries. These people seemed to have the whole ‘Evangelical’ thing
down pat – from worship music, to preaching, to the after service food. In the
basement of the church, we stuck out like sore thumbs. My friends and I were
dressed in neatly pressed shirts and I was wearing a yellow tie with blue
crosses patterned across the front. We had large Bibles and journals to take
sermon notes in under our arms. We screamed ‘Bible college students’ and
everyone knew it. One woman approached us and introduced herself as the
associate pastor of the church. She began our conversation by saying: ‘You’re
from Moody, aren’t you?’ We were proud of our vocation as Bible college
students preparing for ministry. As we conversed with this pastor, we were
caught off guard both by her kindness and her rootedness in Christ. She
explained her journey of faith with us and her passion for being the hands and
feet of Jesus to our neighbourhood and city. She encouraged us to attend the Bible
study that would be taking place in just a few minutes. ‘Bible study?’ I
thought. ‘These people study the Bible?’ We politely declined her
offer and headed back to our campus.
As
soon as we walked out of the church, my friends and I looked at each other. The
colour left our faces. We were in shock. We had just had a very positive,
Jesus-centred experience at a church we had been warned had abandoned the
faith. We felt encouraged and even convicted by the Holy Spirit by the message
the woman pastor preached. The people were so genuine. They even had a bible
study. These realisations shook us to our core. We had been told that this
church was dangerous, but what we found was a community of beautiful brothers
and sisters in Christ. The Spirit of Jesus was so evident, even in a place that
had significantly different theology, practices, and worldviews from us. This
experience ignited a passion in my soul for exploring beyond the boundaries
that I had been taught to stay within. Every Sunday for the remainder of the
semester, my friends and I decided to visit a different church every week, and
on almost every Sunday, we had transformative and edifying experiences in
communities we had been taught to keep our distance from and even to demonise
and warn others about. In other words, we continued to find Jesus hanging out
in places where he wasn’t supposed to be, according to our religious leaders.
How very Christ-like of him.
This is the value of wandering. The value of
breaking the rules and leaving the backyard, where we know we are safe, and
wandering in to strange, unknown territory. Every time I have wandered in my
faith, I have ended up experiencing God in fresh ways. I have come to see that
exploration is not a practice of the unfaithful, but rather is exactly what
being a follower of Christ is actually all about. If you have ever read through
the Gospels, then you know that Jesus is always pushing his followers to move
beyond their comfort zones. He led them into uncomfortable and often un-kosher
(pun intended) situations. He caused them to have far more questions than
answers. I believe the reason Jesus did this was because he was far more
interested in allowing his disciples to cultivate a relationship and trust with
and in him than leading them to a place of ‘arrival’. Jesus wasn’t worried
about giving anyone any answers. He was interested in leading them on a
journey. Jesus created spiritual nomads, not doctrinal guards. Jesus stirred up
doubt in the minds of those who thought they had it all figured out and
honoured the seekers. Those who sought after God had to remain humble. Those
who thought they had God all figured out were oppressive and proud. I have
experienced the same reality in my own journey. James, Jesus’ little brother,
reminds us that ‘God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.’
(James 4:6)
It is only when we learn to value our
wandering and lack of knowing and find ourselves relying on the untamable wind
of God’s Spirit to guide us into uncharted waters that we receive grace and truth.
Following God is about wandering down the roads less travelled and discovering
the pearl of great price buried in a field. When we begin to understand this as
the pattern of life that we are called to follow, our lives begin to radically
change. We no longer find our identity or value in having the right theology or
being a part of the right denomination. Instead, we recognise that we, along
with the rest of humanity, are just sojourners in this life. Our eyes are
opened and we begin to discover Jesus hanging out in unexpected places and with
the most unlikely of people, all around us. Life becomes a scavenger hunt,
following after the wind of God’s Spirit off the beaten path, never knowing
where we are heading, but trusting that wherever it is, God will be there and
it’s going to be amazing.
Wandering has
become the foundation of my spiritual life. And the journey down each new path
and into each new tribe of people is absolutely thrilling.
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