long day of reading

so i've been reading philip yancey's reaching for the invisible God. i'm about 1/3 of the way through, and all he's talked about is doubt. basically he's taken every common conception and cliche about the evangelical protestant way of doing things and shattered it. parts that stick out to me are him talking about things you hear people say all the time like "God told me to say..." usually being a lie, and all the testimonies of successes that the church stresses. a lot of the time the church is so "feel-good" that people who are hurting and confused feel like there is something wrong with them because the struggles are not addressed.

he talks about all of the christian writers who have expressed their doubts openly and sheds light on the "spiritual propaganda" which disappoints so many when they don't see the promises come to fruition. all of the heroes in the bible went through periods of great drought and even suffering before they had their epiphanies. a friend of mine recommended this book to me because of how my life's been the past year, and the fact that the areas he addresses fit my way of thinking (my favorite book in the bible is ecclesiastes). i like to challenge things to see and understand what i really believe, and a lot of times i'm so cynical and critical that i can find holes in anything, often including my own ideas and beliefs.

i wish people in the church who are guilty of alienating themselves from strguggling believers (shoot, everyone's struggling, i guess what i'm getting at is people who think there's something wrong with them because of their struggles and doubts) with their pride and churchspeak could read this and see that we need to make the church experience more real. i wish that nonbelievers and those who have lost their faith in God could read this so that it would shatter any misconceptions that they have about God. all too often people are turned off by the thought of christianity because of the hypocrisy that they see in the church. they're turned off by hardships and they say "if there was a God, he wouldn't have let this happen." whenever people asked Jesus why such horrible things had happened to people, rather than give them reasons behind it, he said, let's see how the Father can use this for his own good. not that God caused it, but he will always use it for his good.

what this book has said so far is, it's okay to doubt, and you're going to have droughts, even really long ones at times.

to those who are turned off because of the people they see in church i say this: don't look at all the misfits, but look toward the Savior. He's the only perfect one, and his grace is sufficient for all those hypocrites and for you.

i feel like this is too scattered to make sense. if it is, i'm sorry. i'll try to explain it better if you ask me.