I'm THAT Jorge...

Thanks again for ruining that, Lebron.

Five months ago, I publicly outed myself as a skeptic, an agnostic and a Christian. It IS as strange and contradictory as it sounds. For three years, I had been dealing with doubts about the faith I was raised on. The people closest to me had long been aware of where I stood on the matter, and that was good enough for me. But in April, I chose to be public because I didn’t want to offend the people whose world I was re-inserting myself into.

I had been married for a year and half by that point. My wife had known about my doubts for two and a half years. She did not share my skepticism, but supported my decision to explore it. With two very different perspectives, our relationship had done remarkably well, but that was beginning to change. The conflict was putting a strain on us and I was not ok with that.

That was when I decided to “become” a Christian again. It was a decision that had nothing to do with a change in beliefs; but merely, a change in my lifestyle. I was choosing to operate my household and my marriage in a way that coincided with my wife’s standards and beliefs, instead of my own. So I publicly admitted that I was “faking it” for the sake of my marriage.

That’s true love, people.

The reactions were varied and mostly typical. I had pretty much called it perfectly when I said that some wouldn’t understand, others would be offended and others would tell me it was impossible. What mattered to me was that my decision had clearly lifted a weight off of my wife’s shoulders. She was free to live out her faith without my usual sarcastic and irreverent rebuttals. She felt release to fully embed herself into a ministry she believed in. She was happier, so I was happier.

One thing I had not expected was the……..well, the love that I received in overwhelming fashion from both parties. As I’d expected, some in both groups had been offended. But most of my friends empathized with my situation, expressed admiration for my commitment to my marriage, and appreciated my honesty.

It was weird.

Trying to embed myself into Christian culture was even more awkward, which I suppose is understandable, considering the “faking it” nature of my actions. It turned out that letting everyone know exactly where I stood on the matter just made everything I did all the more ambiguous. Every “Christian” gesture or action was eyed suspiciously. Was I playing nice out of genuine desire to live a Christian life, or was I there undercover to turn more believers into doubting fools?

In June, one of my good friends wrote and delivered a sermon to me in front of a couple thousand people at mine and my wife’s church. It was a direct response to my public announcement in April, and it was good. It left me with a lot to think about and it took me a month to respond. I would imagine my response wasn’t what he was looking for, as I essentially accused him of misunderstanding my skepticism.

My response contained two very important (to me, that is) points. They were important because before I wrote them down that day, I had never realized just how true and relevant they were to my entire journey. The first was essentially an acknowledgement that when I looked back on most of my Christian experience, (before I ever doubted) I remembered it with great fondness. Basically, I missed Christianity. Whether he was a figment of my imagination or not, I genuinely missed the days when I would worship and serve my deity with complete abandon.The second point was that I needed this space between belief and unbelief. I knew that I had to choose someday, because indecision only ensures that you will never move in any direction. But I had been raised in Christianity. I had honestly never been given a choice. This is why the doubt had pulled me so far away from my upbringing. When you are sheltered from the holes in your faith for your entire life, the moment you discover their existence, they look like craters to you. You can’t ignore them. You have to explore them. I was tired of being told to stop looking. It was believers and non-believers alike, urging me to stop looking at the other side. They had the answers already and I was supposedly wasting my time by giving my ear to anything else. That was where I was. Stuck in the middle between belief and unbelief, trying earnestly to figure out which one made more or less sense. I was finally realizing how much I needed to be in that space, but under different circumstances.

And that was when it actually happened. That was the first time, after more than three years of doubts and questions—accompanied by supposed answers from both sides—that all of the noise went away. In the silence, there weren’t any more voices from people telling me why God made sense or why he didn’t. They were drowned out by my own voice, finally calm and certain of the very simple question I was really asking myself.

What do you want?

What………..do you want?

I’m sure many people would probably contend this was what they were trying to say to me all along. Maybe they were, and I just misunderstood them. But if I’m being completely honest, it was a single friend of mine—Amy—who helped me to drown out all of the noise so that I could hear myself ask that question. I don’t even know if that was what she intended, but it’s what happened. I hope that makes sense to everybody else who wants credit for helping me to reach an endpoint. In the end, you all played a role. But Amy was the one that enabled me to shut you all up just long enough to figure out what was going on in my own head, absent of all other influences.

All this time, my internal conflict was driven by the desire to be right. After all, it is human nature to want to be right about everything. And it is in my nature to need to be right, at all costs. So yes, I tormented over the concept of a God, or lack thereof, because I didn’t want to waste my time believing in something that wasn’t true. I couldn’t believe in God because I couldn’t be certain he was true. But I also couldn’t believe there was no god, because I couldn’t be certain of that. I spent three and a half years looking for proof of either possibility, and I didn’t care which one proved to be right. I just wanted to be right.

It’s funny to me, the number of people who are convinced that they know the absolute truth and present it that way. It’s good, I suppose, once you’ve made your choice, to stand behind it with that kind of conviction. But let’s just be honest for a minute: No matter what we believe, especially in terms of the existence of any deity (keeping on point here), none of it has actually been irrefutably proven. And so when I say this, I am stating it as transparently as I can:

I understand why you do/don’t believe in God. It makes sense to me. Really. There’s enough reasonable doubt to discount God altogether. There’s also enough reason to believe in a great architect, regardless of what that architect’s ultimate motives may be. I can’t tell you that you are wrong either way.

For me, (“For me” is every debater’s most hated phrase. I hate it.) when all of the noise went away, I realized I was already asking myself the next question. “Okay, so if you can’t prove one side or another, what do you really want?” I already made my choice a few weeks ago, but I made it “public” last night, so it’s only fitting that I blog about it, right?

I want God.

I want Christianity. I want worship. I want faith. I liked those parts of being a Christian. I didn’t like being religious, so I’m gonna go ahead and keep that part out of it. I mean, we’re human, right? So I can’t promise to always be that rare breed of Christian that everybody respects, but I’ll do my best. I’m so disappointed, because I really, genuinely hoped that I would emerge from the space between with the answers to all the world’s problems. I was optimistic that I would be able to settle this “God” debate once and for all, but the questions still linger. My questions still linger and I’m not going to stop asking them. I’m just comfortable with my doubts now. They aren’t controlling (see: torturing) me anymore.

I’m not sure that God is there, but I’m going to go ahead and believe that he is. Why? Because that is what I want. And because when I look at the world, I’ve convinced myself that there must be something better than this. I hope for more, and now that hope has turned into a faith of its own. It’s uninspiring, but it’s the truth. I was hoping this day would be momentous, regardless of the outcome. But it’s just the next day, and I’m ok with that. I am at peace with my choice.

I should address a few people.

I want my friend who once told me he lost sleep over my salvation to take some Tylenol PM tonight. You and your incredible wife have been in my life for 15 years now, constantly loving on me and vouching for me when no one else would. Let’s just be real; you are getting the biggest crowns in Heaven off of me….you know, if there is such a thing.

There are a lot of you Christian friends that I could thank for various reasons. I know you’re all super happy and all that, because in the words of Ron Howard on Arrested Development, “This is a big get for God.” But I guess the thing I am most thankful for from all of you is the fact that you let me in, even when I was openly “faking it.” The typical religious response would have been to label me a demon-possessed blasphemer/heretic and make me feel unwelcome, which probably would have sealed the deal. But you let me walk out the process (for the most part…*smiley face*) with warmth and compassion, which is probably what sealed the deal in this direction.

There’s a lot of you left. Most of you will never read this blog, much less this far into this entry. But the good thing about what I’m about to say is that the ones who read all the way through to this part are the ones I am talking to anyway. So here’s to all of you unbelieving sinners [insert another smiley face here]. If I’m being completely honest, one of my biggest fears when constructing this blog entry was the fear that I could be losing some of my absolute favorite friends. I don’t want to lose you. That’s all.

Now that I’m done being all melodramatic, let me just go ahead and answer the question that will inevitably be the most popular.

“So what all has changed now, Jorge?”

Well, for one thing, I’m getting an awful lot less free meals.

*Smiley face*