Jerry Scott Fisher’s Weblog

This is my second post to a small project I call “Searching for God” where I hope to explore and articulate my perspective of God and invite others to do the same. This is something I have wanted to do for quite a long time and I’m glad to have finally started it up. And by my measure, it has been successful. I have garnered a few nice comments from friends on Facebook, and on my personal weblog, I received a very thoughtful and well written response from a gentleman who stopped by. I would like to encourage all of you out there to continue (or start) to participate if you feel the urge, and to feel welcome to write freely and openly. As I explore and shape my own views, I am always open to new challenges, disillusionments, insights, and forms of expression. I believe it is out of love for God that we seek with candor and honesty.

In my previous post, I attempted to express my view that the word God, as a supreme Being, refers to a very transcendent concept, yet it is often crammed casually into the many vicissitudes of human experience and expression. We are a small, humble and limited species, and our faculties of sense, perception and cognition are bound to this sphere. Yet our pride doesn’t seem to be very bound, and we often folly in taking our personalized encapsulations of God and extrapolating them to the stars. If we assume the existence of God as a supreme Being, then I believe that it is imperative that we invoke God with due reverence, humility, and patience. Yet if I had a nickle for every time God was used to endorse one’s ideology, actions, judgements, campaigns, countries, and/or pizza parlors, I could build a tower of Babel in my backyard. I believe we are treading a perilous path when we presume God’s approval is under our sway. In fact, it actually alienates good people from God when they hear of God masked in this finite, fallible way. Now does this mean God never speaks through us? No, I believe God does speak through us (and it’s miraculous), but I’d caution that without ‘keeping it real’, we do a disservice rather than a service to this supreme Being. Simply put, I would remind those of a religious persuasion (including myself) to be humble and open when invoking God.

Back to the main point of this activity: Searching for God. Is God, in fact, a supreme being? Would God be of a monotheistic, polytheistic, or pantheistic nature? Or something else? Is God immanent or wholly transcendent? Or both? Does God intervene in this world or just let creation play out? Or does God not exist at all outside of our psychological constructs? I obviously have no idea. But I believe God is somewhere beyond the middle of all those possibilities. I believe in an uncorrupted, eternal truth pervading and transcending this universe. I believe abstractly in the Christian meta-narrative of a tragic corruption befalling humankind, our current plight, and a prophesied day of purification through God’s kingdom and grace. I believe God acts in this world. Furthermore, when I pray, I pray in Jesus’ name and seek forgiveness of my sins. I find great personal wisdom in the parables and teachings attributed to Jesus, and I have faith that when we demonstrate true love for God and our fellow humans, a victory has been won against the forces of evil and corruption.

Of the above personal creeds, I hope to tie them into to further posts where I explore my view of God in terms of a Creator, Redeemer, Provider, Lord, and Source of Life. For the rest of this post, I would like to offer a testimony of sorts of how I arrived at my (admittedly abstract and ambiguous) conception of God and four key experiences that have been transformative for me over the years.  

Formative Years

I was born in a Christian household and was confirmed in a Methodist Church. My parents, while not being zealous, attended church regularly and (I believe) found refuge in their faith. As all parents do, they played a pivotal role in the early shaping of my views of God. I would say my father was the archetypical provider and protector. He was generous in all things, rewarded us (my older brother and myself) fairly for work, challenged us in sport, and was strong enough to shield us from the unknown and scary things outside. My mother loved us unconditionally, soothed our pains, nurtured us, comforted us, read us stories, and educated us. As I remember, Sunday school days consisted of 60% playing/daydreaming, 30% music, and 10% learning about Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, Joseph, Moses, Jonah and the whale, the Lord’s Prayer, the Last Supper, and Jesus’ love.

1) God as Friend

I believe a key event in my youthful faith occurred in the midst of a scary night where fear of some unknown darkness began to take hold of me. I don’t remember it being a sharp, specific boogeyman type of fright but more of a dull, overarching dread of the dark. It cast a lost, forlorn, and helpless feeling over me. I was in my younger brother’s room at the time and I feared for both of us. I remember praying to God in that darkness like a small candle in a cave. I repeated prayers for safety over and over. Finally, I remember a sweeping feeling come over me, and a simple desire to ask God – almighty God – to be my friend. It was probably something I learned in Sunday school, but in that moment it seemed suddenly so intuitive. Whatever it was, it conquered the darkness in my spirit that night. Also, I believe it led to a new paradigm of prayer for my young mind: a friendly candor in approaching God any and all times.

2) Openness to Wisdom

A second transformative moment for me, would be a time in early highschool where I believe I developed a regard for wisdom (whether I gained any wisdom or not is debatable. I’ve certainly done my share of boneheaded things since). I remember around this time I had a first good read of the book of Proverbs and loved it. The idea of wisdom calling to us in the marketplace and yielding a treasure greater than gold was (and is) beautiful. Around this same time, I received a pamphlet from my church with a short fable of a man who was being chased by a hungry bear. In the story, he prayed that the bear could attain knowledge of God (and therefore as the man figured leave him alone). The man’s specific prayer was granted yet the outcome was unexpected and tragic. The bear thanked God for the food he was about to eat. The moral of the story was that when we pray we shouldn’t get carried away with our own thoughts, intentions, and desires. Rather, we should yield to God’s wisdom and let God provide to us as is proper. I believe these two lessons set a foundation within my spirit to seek wisdom from all corners and to simply fall into God in prayer and need.

 3) Coming Home

This third key moment in my spiritual development was probably the most tumultuous, blissful, and profound of them all. I was a senior in highschool and a party animal, baby! It was spring break ‘97 and I had surreptitiously procured a few cases of Heineken for when my family went out of town. As it turned out, my mother found these beers just before leaving and was extremely disappointed in me. I hadn’t been the most well-behaved young man prior to that and this was just another brick on top of it all. We had a huge argument and were on bad terms when she left the house with my younger brother and sister (my father was out of town already). I started drinking the beers immediately, grumbling and sulking. Later that night I gathered with a group of friends and we drove up to the city about an hour north. We partied pretty hard with alcohol and other substances.

Finally, drained and fried, we began our way home. It was at that moment staring outside the passenger side window into the fields along the road that I reflected on my fight with my mother and on the terms I had last seen her. And then suddenly and overwhelmingly a desire to make things right struck my core. I repented and I wanted to come home (spiritually). After that, I can only describe the feeling as being touched by God. I’m sorry it sounds cheesy, but I think this is the feeling many people have when they claim to be born again. It was mystical. I was struck with a profound sense of presence permeating the air. It was like God was sown into each and every molecule around me. Love poured down from every conceivable angle. My mind became extremely empty and unburdened, swept clean as if all the clouds of earthly pain (known or unknown) had been dispersed into the clear, cool night. I knew God had come to me. I was overjoyed. I didn’t need anything else. I remember thinking I could be anywhere in the world (even at some boring, cheesy Christian sing along) and be utterly in bliss and at peace.

Alas, the feeling faded. The clouds of the world seeped back into my mind and spirit. The air became dull and absent. The bliss that had overtaken me faded into receding afterthought. I had returned to myself, with and all the baggage, bad habits, and fallen nature of before. But I was changed. I was transformed. I had witnessed something. I was sure of it.

The years passed and the experience became a distant memory. Doubt crept in. Was there a purely psychological explanation? Was it a result of my thought processes, mixed with motion, mixed with alcohol and other substances? Was I just being a self-delusional, exaggerating, idealist who got carried away one late night? I don’t know. But I feel there was something more. Regardless of any chemical or psychological influences, I feel in my heart that grace reached down from the heavens and filled me that night. It’s just one of those things. 

4) God Snatching me Back

My last and most recent transformational experience took place about a year and a half ago. It’s a very long story. Suffice to say I had a string of painful events take place in my life culminating with the feeling that I had lost everything and my life was over. Prior to all of that, I would describe my spiritual state at the time as ’self-indulgently complacent’. I prided myself on the thought that I had a special privilege with God. I felt I had special insight into the holes and silly superficialities of organized religion. Despite prodigalizing many of my blessings, I thought I was cool, in control, and God was on my side for each and every whim. (I believe, of course, God is on our side at all times, but I had lulled myself into thinking I knew God’s mind). In retrospect, I was probably the spiritual equivalent of an obese man basking his flab in the sunlight.

Then the string of pain hit me. I reacted foolishly. I became indignant to God. I was a good guy, I just wanted a good life, why did this happen? I griped, I groaned, I complained venomously. Things got worse. Perhaps God left me to my folly to teach me an important lesson. I hadn’t been cool and in control all this time. Quite the opposite, I had bewitched myself into thinking I was the master of my domain.

I took my bad situation and made it worse by nursing my bitterness, abusing alcohol, and living wildly. I danced in the din of disaster for about a month until it finally came to me that I was reaching the bottom. I was throwing my life away. I suddenly woke up far along on a dark and lonely road. I was broken, and I beseeched God one last time to restore me. This was not where I wanted to be. I had tasted folly and destruction one last time and had had my fill.

By the grace of God I was healed. I attribute my healing to God and testify to that. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a good four or five months of fervent prayer, seclusion, and fasting before I felt that I had reestablished my balance. It was a hard but necessary lesson in humility and I hope to never forget it. I was lucky.

Today

Well, today I am utterly spent with writing

 If any of you actually made it through this whole thing, I commend your forbearance. Thank you for reading.