Lots of Questions???
Last night i was out in the valley in Brisbane just hanging out with some friends. As I looked around at the masses of young adults filling the streets, lining up for hundreds of metres to get into the trendy bars, (there is no other place, at least in Brisbane, where i have seen so many people week after week all clearly seeking the same thing) a few questions started entering my mind.
Is this what life has become about for most??? What are they thinking??? What is really going on in their hearts??? Are they content and happy to be here and live this life??? If so what does that mean for me and what i believe??? Why would someone want to trade in that life for this one???
I have no answers only questions at this point. Just really trying to seek out what my life means in this context where clearly i am the minority however having a message to bring. A message that is meant to be truth bringing life to the full and if this is the case then why do sooooo many people pass it up????
Any comments would be appreciated from people who at times feel like they struggle with the same thing????
You were there, weren’t you?
what were you thinking?
what was going on in your heart?
were you content?
ok, i guess you just told us what you were thinking. but maybe everyone else was thinking the same as you?
It’s possible but hard to know unless you ask questions…………..am starting to get a little tired of being the one that always asks the questions……….just feeling a bit bummed by it all…………i guess my heart is to see people have the same kind of passion for justice and jesus as for booze and babes……….it’s mainly that it costs you everything and takes effort………why on earth would anyone give up what they have for that???? i guess i know i did however
i was lucky i had a good family, was given lots of internal and external resources and was given space where i could think about the BIG questions…….don’t know where i’m going with this………just some thoughts???
They’re good questions…
my experience is that it’s surprising how many big questions are actually going on for people, if you can get them in a quiet space. and i think some of those people lining the streets are there to avoid the silence which invites the questions. of course some of them (like me, and probably you) are there because it’s our idea of fun, because it’s the neutral space where we can meet our friends and their friends, because dancing is a great release from care.
it can be overwhelming, but it can also be very surprising when you find that honest moment in the crowd.
By way of encouragement, Sammy, we were out on the streets of Guernsey an affluent little island (pop:60,000) between the UK & France the night before doing the same & feeling the same as you. We are inspired by the 24/7 prayer team in Ibiza (the party island of the Med.) who spend all night on the steets just being there to help those who have too much and pray with people. They also have a prayer room to go back to with people. That is what we felt we needed a safe place where people could chat & pray, if required. We are waiting to see what might develop over the next few months…lots of wild ideas…but just thought it would be good to let you that “on the other side” of the world people are struggling with the same questions.
I was talking to (or, possibly, having quite a heated argument with – depending on where you were sitting) a guy at work on thursday. A nice kid – Brazilian – Australian. The only thing he had to say about the church was “no book could make me torture people to death to believe in my god”. Which was a good point I thought, as far as it went. But when I pressed him, he had no real reason to criticise the behaviour – truth being relative for him (even maths, strangely), he could only say “well it makes me feel uncomfortable”.
Here is a guy whose morals, which are of the normal well brought up young man type, are completely dissassociated from his beliefs about the world.
I felt as though I was a million miles away from him, waving at him from a distant planet. The gulf between his world and mine was huge, and impossible for me to cross.
Presumably he struggles with things? Or at least has done, and surely hardship will come his way. But there seemed to be no way to communicate with him. My worldview – where it is important that what I think and the way I (try to) live are in some sort of consonance – was profoundly mysterious and deeply uninteresting to him. Or so it seemed.
I sometimes think I shouldn’t bother. My take on things is of interest only to people who think in the same sort of philosophy-based way that I do, and I guess that set is vanishingly small. I worry that I’m a poor witness. But, then again, like Luther (in significantly less trying times), here I stand, I can do no other. I can only be myself with any degree of success. If I was trying to do it some other way, I would do an extremely poor job.