I'm having one of those days...

It's one of those days where I remember things I had forgotten, about people I had forgotten, too. Specifically, a friend I had switched places with --- a girl who had loved Jesus when I knew he couldn't be real. Now I'm a pastor and she's an atheist.

And yet as I read through her blog and follow her journey from then to now, it just blows my mind to see words right from my own head and heart... not THEN, but NOW. Minus the explitives, of course. I am (present tense) just as disillusioned, just as disgusted, just as just-plain-mad after seeing an experiencing just the same kind of crap (and the same kind of GOOD) that she did.

But I'm a pastor. And she's an atheist.

There but for the grace of God go I?

I developed a theory as a little baby Christian (with my cynicism still in full bloom) at Bible college that if a college student didn't get a job in the church within the first little while after graduation, the likelihood was that their faith and their walk would head down the toilet. Find a way to keep something in focus (like making it a career) and why shouldn't you not suck at living it? But leave the bubble and be forced to survive without being force-fed the Bible and worship music, how well are you going to do? First you find yourself doing laundry on Sundays, next you find yourself doubting if any spiritual experience you'd previously testified to was the result of anything but the bad cafeteria food you'd been trying to digest.

There but for the grace of God go I.

More to come. For now, I'd best go back to forgetting, if only for awhile. I have to go be a pastor.