Photo By Micaela Alcaino
I’ve never really felt like I fit into a box. Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been different. The odd one out. The person that didn’t quite fit in. This has been a huge insecurity of mine for years, as a coping mechanism I often purposely push myself out of the box in one aspect of my life. Something that I can control, in order to feel like it’s my choice rather than just who I am. In school I was really involved in music, and was quite outspoken about my Christian Faith, in college I had a multicoloured mohawk, and more recently I’ve grown an outrageous beard. The theory is that if I define myself by these external things, it distracts from the interior insecurity that I don’t fit in.
I’m slowly beginning to realise, however, that not fitting in is in fact, OK. I’m beginning to see the world not as something that has order and categories that things fit into, but as chaotic, colourful and totally diverse. Whereas before I found labelling things and thinking about the world in black and white dualistic terms incredibly helpful, I’m now realising the beauty of chaos, and that so much of the world exists in the space between the boxes we create to contain it.
I am a twenty-four-year-old straight, white male. On one hand this puts me quite clearly into certain boxes and categories as a person. Yet these things don’t totally define who I am on the inside. While I am white, I still can be totally passionate about racial equality. While I am quite clearly male, I am still a feminist. And while I am 80% certain I am straight, I can still fight for the rights of the LGBTQ community.
Last weekend I went away with my church small group. As part of the program we had a time of prayer, worship and ministry. During this a friend of mine asked if he could pray for me, I was hesitant at first because I didn’t really know what I wanted prayer for. On one hand, I was desperate to reconnect with God, deconstruction has meant I’ve lost the closeness with God I once had, and if I’m honest part of me really misses that. On the other hand, I didn’t want to go back to the faith I had a few years ago, while it was a lot more comfortable, my worldview and understanding of the universe has changed so much. The model of God that I had back then was very different to my understanding of (or lack of) God now. I needed something new, something fresh. I needed to encounter God in a new way because I do not see the world with the same eyes anymore.
As my friend prayed, I felt the loss I had experienced during deconstruction in an extremely tangible way. It felt like I was standing in the ruins of a temple that had fallen down, the temple was my faith, the thing I had built to contain God in my life. Whether this was an image from God, or just my imagination making a visual representation of my pain I don’t know, I don’t think that matters.
I was torn, I desperately wanted to rebuild the temple and get back the faith that I had lost, but I knew that was impossible, the damage was too great. My friend finished praying for me and after sulking in the corner for a bit I went outside for a cigarette. As I processed my thoughts outside, I felt a strong sense (maybe it was God, maybe it was me, again I don’t think it matters) that God didn’t want me to rebuild the temple. That just as I am not bound by labels, neither is God. Somehow, in the chaos and mystery of the universe, God doesn’t fit in any boxes I put God in. Father or mother, sovereign or friend, loving or just, powerful or knowing; all of these things are God and yet at the same time none of them are.
I can’t build a temple for God in my life because I can never contain the divine. God is not limited to a certain part of my life, and I shouldn’t try to put God there. I’m starting to understand what Meister Eckhart meant when he said, “Therefore let us pray to God that we may be free of God, that we may gain the truth and enjoy it eternally…”.
I’m standing in the ruins of the temple I had built, of the faith I once had and of the God I thought I knew. The world is totally chaotic, and absolute mystery, much like God, whatever God is. But I feel like I’m finally free of the box, finally embracing the fact I might not fit in. And I feel freer than I have in a long time.
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