Reborn? Renewed? Regenerated? Who am I?

Faith is a process, not a moment.  We begin to learn about faith from the instant we are born.  How we are cared for, how well we are loved, how we are treated by those closest to us, builds a foundation for faith that threads through our entire life experience.

But no matter how well we are treated in our first moments of life, there will come a time when our faith is tried and tested.  It may come early, it may come later, but it will come.  It will cause a rupture in our life experience, a crevasse that is difficult to bridge, and we will have a moment where we must decide what we are going to do moving forward.

Some of those moments are small, and our learning opportunity is minimal, although many small moments build character and the resources to deal with the larger breaches to come.  But some of those moments are life changing, and cause us to question everything that came before.  Death, divorce, financial hardship, chronic illness, or simply being let down in a big way - whether it is in our own life or someone we love, these things seriously challenge our faith, both in people, and sometimes, in God.

Hypocrisy is one of the greatest challenges to faith.  When a parent says one thing and does another, children lose faith.  When a partner pretends to adhere to one set of beliefs, but acts differently, we lose trust.  When a friend lets us down by lying to us or being disloyal, we lack confidence in them for the future.  Expecting other people to adhere to a higher standard than we hold ourselves is never a good foundation for ongoing relationships.

The church is not immune to hypocrites.  On the contrary, as in all other walks of life, the church is filled with people who want us to do as they say, while they do something else entirely.  That doesn't change because we are in God's house.  We are all born flawed and self-interested by nature.  Thus we are all vulnerable to being hypocrites. We are human everywhere, even in our most sacred spaces.

When we are let down by our fellow Christians, it frequently causes a rupture in our sacred life.  We question truths that previously went unexamined.  We look harder beneath the surface to see what we missed.  It can become a brutal game to look for every flaw and every crack in the facade, to find an explanation or catch out those who have hurt us.  Sometimes we even question God.  Ultimately, it can lead us to separate ourselves from our church community, or even God himself, when the breach in faith is severe enough.

It is generally in a crisis of faith that we are prompted to walk away from the church.  It is rarely done in a positive atmosphere, with good feelings all around.  We are angry, hurt, and feel misunderstood, and we want to lash out at those who have done us harm.

How do we move forward after that crisis of faith occurs?  How do we channel our energy in a positive way, so that we don't lose our trust in God, even as we realize that trusting humans is always fraught with danger?  How do we find ourselves again, when we are lost in the isolation of our own despair and pain?

To maintain our relationship with God, we don't need a building.  We don't need specific people, a certain liturgy, specific hymns.  There is no set path to God, save the resurrection.

But we do need to feed our soul.  We need to nourish our hunger with others who feel as we do.  We need the support and caring of people who stand in human form for a God who is ever present, but not physically here.  It is a conundrum when you don't know how to satisfy the hunger while protecting the spirit.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, as I have faced my own recent faith struggles, both in my Christian life, and in my life generally.  I have felt at a loss, not sure how to handle the transitions I have been forced to make.  I am sad and disappointed, but feeling my way, and hoping that the losses I have endured will lead to gains down the road, even if I cannot see the finish line at this moment.

Over these months, I have gone through a series of transitions: regeneration, renewal, and rebirth.  Although they have much in common, they are different, and I think all are a necessary part of the process to heal and move forward.  I share these thoughts with you in the hopes that you will find peace or comfort, if you are in a similar place in your life.  As I search for my truth, perhaps you will also find some truth that helps you.

To regenerate is to restore, and that is usually the first effort.  When you love someone or some thing, you want to return to a positive relationship with them.  When you have a fight with someone you love, spouse, child, parent, sibling, at the end of the day, you want to be restored into the same loving relationship you have always had, or that you want to have.

In my case, I tried to make sense of the problem, I tried to work through and address the issues head on, I worked to overcome my feelings of disappointment and hurt, and I threw myself back into the work in an effort to overcome the breach that had occurred.  I wanted to regenerate the same feelings and dedication I have felt in the past, and heal the wounds of the present so we could all move on together.

For many problems, this would be enough, especially when an effort is made by everyone involved.  Too many times, we fail to take the obvious step of simply apologizing for the hurt that has been felt, instead justifying or trying to explain it so that we are not held accountable for the part we played in the problem.  It is not enough to say, "I'm sorry, but..." when someone is wounded.  They need to feel heard, they need to feel understood, and they need to know that, even if the problem doesn't have a simple solution, the sorrow is shared and it is genuine.  Apologies, honest conversation, and a desire to truly make amends goes a long way.  Wounds can heal, and it leads to the desired ending most of the time.

But when the breach is so great, or the effort feels one sided, you move to the second step, which is renewal.  Although people often think of renewal as simply redoing something, it goes a little deeper than that.  To renew is actually to replace, to rid yourself of the old and worn and put something fresh and different in its place.

Renewal is difficult, because as humans, we tend to resist change.  It is difficult to tear away the long standing habits of the past and find a substitute, even if, in the long term, it will be better for us.  Quite simply, we keep the clutter of our lives because it is painful to let go.

But renewal is another way forward, even if it hurts.  We can keep the framework, while still making the necessary changes to make life positive again.  Whether it is finding a new way to do our job, interacting with a friend in a new way, or changing the service we attend, we can renew within the current framework and hang on to what is working while jettisoning what isn't.  It takes time to find the new normal, and it takes time to renew our relationships.  But it is often a positive long term outcome, because we can get rid of anger and old hurt and start with something fresh and different.

Unfortunately, renewal is not always possible, either.  Sometimes we need to make a clean break and leave the past behind.  Relationships can be permanently broken, and painful as it is, we have to let go. This is the most difficult step to take, because it means that nothing will ever be the same.

Rebirth is to start again.  We walk away from our old way of doing things, and find a new way to go forward from there.  I think, after a long period of hurt and pain, many people find themselves reborn, realizing that there are new possibilities that will lead to greater satisfaction.  But it takes time and healing to get to that point.  And it is a painful process to let go, having the faith that there is something better on the other side of the breach if only we can believe in ourselves enough to make it across.

Rebirth is the greatest test of faith.  It is painful.  It is blind.  It is based on trust, not of others, but of our God who has a plan for us.

John 3:16 is, quite rightly, one of the most well known and loved passages of the Bible.  But I think the most powerful verses in that chapter are actually the ones that come at the end. From John 3:20-21:

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God."

These verses speak to the rebirth of our spirit, and the rebirth that Jesus brought to us through his birth, death and resurrection.

We all walk in darkness.  We are all afraid of being exposed for our mistakes and frailties.  But we must not be afraid to cut loose from what holds us back, what brings us hurt, what keeps us in darkness.  We must boldly embrace what God offers us, even if we cannot see our way forward.  Look towards the Light, and we will have truth.

I don't know what my life will hold for me in the coming days, months and years.  I am not guaranteed tomorrow, so I am going to try to release my worries and let God lead me today.

Faith is fluid.  God is eternal.  Live in the light.