Questions... and answers

Came back late in the night with many things to think about and, after vacuuming my room, sat on my mattress (my bed had been taken away the day before to swap for a new one) with the fairy lights on, my Bible and notebook and had a good think. Maybe it's a psychological need of women that they need to have a good cry once in a while, and certainly I've been doing that almost consistently the whole of this week as I think about my life and my priorities and what really matters most to me. And things that I still struggle with, being so caught up in the doing and the talking sometimes that I forget about the being.

Let me talk less and do more. Let me do less and be more.

This morning I was woken up by a loud banging on my door and I knew the Mattress People had come to give me a new bed. So I climbed off my mattress and pulled on a jumper and opened the door expecting to see Ricky Martin, our cleaner, who's called Ricky and whom we call Ricky Martin and who is balding and thin and whose trousers are always falling halfway off his bum.

Instead of Ricky Martin I was surprised to see a tall young handsome bloke and he came in and took my mattress away and brought in a new bed and everyone was coming out of their rooms because of the noise and commotion. I did ask him, while I was still half-asleep, whether I could just do without a new bed and sleep on my mattress for the rest of the term, because I quite like being so close to the floor and having everything so simple. But he didn't have the authority to grant me a bed-less room, so I had to accept it.

After that I vacuumed again and sat down for a think again.

I'm glad that it's so much quieter in halls and I'm glad I'm living in halls. There's so much time now to just be yourself and to write and to be quiet and to be comfortable with who you are. There's time to sing in the showers and to come back late at night without facing uncomfortable questions from your housemates and to eat all the unhealthy food you want without being teased, and there's time to listen to music and to sit in my room with my own thoughts and with the twinkling lights in the windows of the halls opposite like will o' the wisps guiding the way to the promised land of dreams.

These few days little nagging doubts have been creeping into my head one by one. The first one came when I read yesterday in Judges the horrible story of a man cutting up his concubine (whom he had sent out to be abused by wicked men) into 12 pieces and sending out each piece to the 12 tribes of Israel to ask for justice. Then going online to try to unearth the mystery or the significance of it I found another story of this guy Jephthah who'd made a foolish promise to God and had sacrificed his daughter to God.

Reading up for my dissertation also caused some questions to plant themselves in my head. I read about people who felt that they'd experienced the presence of God. Scientists found that by stimulating the temporal lobe, they could cause some of their patients to have "epiphanic experience" - seeing great lights, hearing sounds, and experiencing overwhelming feelings; in other words, experiencing the presence of God. Hence Patricia Smith Churchland, the author of the book "Brain-Wise", concluded that the evidence supported the case that a Supernatural Being did not exist, since by using manual stimuli we could conjure the feeling of the presence of God.

I felt really sad when I read that. I think the first two stories were included in the Bible because we have to know how mixed-up man is. How sometimes we think we have the right motives and thoughts but we make rash promises to God. How sometimes we think we're in the right but in reality we can be wrong and yet He can be so tolerant of us. How imperfect we are and how we tend to fail when we try to take matters into our own hands. I think the first two stories weren't about the injustice of God, but about the inadequecy of man. And how the Bible is so relevant today, because it doesn't gloss over anything unpleasant, but it shows us how much depravity the average person is capable of.

As for using manual stimuli to make people feel as though they were in the presence of God, why, it doesn't prove that there isn't a God. It just shows that when people experience God, this is what happens to their brains. And that we have built-in circuits in our brains to experience Him, that these circuits are still there after all these years, just shows that He really wanted to make sure we run after Him. That we need Him in our spirits, but that He also made us, even biologically, to want Him.

I've already been told 3 times this year that the church people were weird. Or more; maybe I can't remember. But one of the people who told me this said that she was prepared to become weird herself, another said it was nice and she could get used to it, and the third wanted whatever it was we'd got. And maybe if you are reading this now you will never believe me when I say "Jesus Christ is the way. He was either mad or lying or He was God." But I hope that you will seek after the truth, and sometime soon you will know it...

With regards to my dissertation and all the arguments flying back and forth over my head the last few days, I would like to say:

'...the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength...'

Perhaps I don't have all the answers, but I do know the truth, and I know it is the truth, because it has set me free.