Smudges on the Window

I have just realized that having a blog is like wandering around your house naked with the windows open; it's all very liberating until someone looks in the window. However, while being caught unawares is one thing, it is quite another to stroll up to the window and press your naked, flabby body against the coolness of the glass in a hideous form of vertical prostration for all the world to see, which is what I seem to do at times on this site.

While I do not regret (so far) anything I have said on this site, because it was what I thought at the time, it is very much a record of my journey towards God which I hope never ends. I want to always be seeking and never arriving. If I ever state that I have arrived, then I know that I have missed God altogether and I hope someone loves me enough to shoot me.
For too many years, although I would not have said it out loud, I had the attitude that I had arrived; that I understood God and his purposes; that I had it all figured out - and nothing was further from the truth. And while we do need to have some sort of framework which helps us make sense of our current understanding of God, we must always be willing to give that up when our journey takes us to a new destination, or we encounter a fellow traveler from another place.

We must always doubt.

Peter Rollins argues that doubt is perhaps the most Christian virtue, and while you have to read his books to understand his arguments, he makes a lot of sense. But this is not what is heard from the pulpit. Doubters are backsliders; people whose Christianity and therefore whose very eternal destiny, is in question - someone to pray for. A friend of mine gave me a book written by one of our old pastors, it was called Certainty; a book that left absolutely no room for the mystery of God; a book that had God all figured out.

I just about threw up.

So, having said all that, that is why I have changed the name of the site to Smudges on the Window with the sub-title A Journey to God. My posts are the smudges that are left behind on the window.

See you on the road.