Conflicted thoughts
It's a Wednesday night and I ought to be at my church cell group meeting. The thing is, I haven't been to either cell group or church service in at least two months -- except for the time I visited Glad Tidings when Nick Tay was back from Mongolia, and the time I went to church with Mom & Dad when I was at home, two weeks ago.
Bleh.
See? Contrary to popular belief, I do not write about EVERYTHING that goes on in my life :P
Anyway... I am so conflicted about my church right now. I wrote some time back about the proposed building project, which is now starting to take shape. Everybody around me is so enthusiastic about it, and I am not. I feel very distant and detached from my cell group members, not to mention the church as a whole.
As a result, I've stayed away.
I simply don't know what to do. If I don't participate in the building project and give to it, then to my mind, there's no point remaining in the church coz I would be there and yet not there, if you get what I mean. If I'm not whole-heartedly sharing in what the church is doing & planning, I can never truly be a part of the family or community.
Our senior pastor has asked us not to give to the project out of obligation, but to give only if we believe in the vision and feel that God wants us to give. Well, I dunno whether God wants me to give or not. And I haven't been able to buy into the vision. So how????
I've been staying away from church & cell group because to hear people talk about giving to the project as "a challenge and an opportunity for me to stretch my faith" makes me feel even more terribly disconnected from the whole thing.
Others have referred to the new building as "the Promised Land" and said that we should not see ourselves as grasshoppers, but as "giant-killers" (unlike the 10 out of 12 Israelite spies who went to scout out Canaan and came back saying, "We could never take over that land! The people there are giants; we are like grasshoppers in their eyes!"). "We should press on to take hold of the promise that God has for our church!" they say. You see the level of excitement? I'm starting to feel like a freak in my own church, because I so cannot identify with all of this.
Mind you, the ordinary members are the ones saying these things -- not the leadership. I'm grateful that there's been a minimum of hype, and that the project hasn't been shoved down our throats at every turn, with numerous "encouragements" to give. But the way everybody else has taken the idea to their bosoms and run away with it kinda scares me, especially because I haven't been able to do the same.
I wonder if God just wants me to submit to my leaders and accept the vision because they believe in it, even though I can't exactly embrace it with open arms myself. Everybody else seems to accept that God gave our leadership this vision and it is a marvellous vision and desirable and we should press forward to achieve it. I wonder if I'm focused too much on myself -- my thoughts, feelings, reservations, scepticism and questions; I wonder if I should just not think about all these things, but trust that God is guiding my leaders, and give.
Part of the problem is that I want to whole-heartedly believe in any cause I support. Can I, if I don't believe in the cause, nevertheless support it anyway because God wants me to???
And does God want me to?? -- that's the million-dollar question...