<< PART 3

There is more (part 4; final)

Several times, I felt a hand try to lift me up but I wasn’t convinced the hand existed. Often, a word of encouragement whispered but I thought, “Perhaps it is just my imagination, an element of my preconditioning”.

Then I heard a voice say:

I sang a dirge, you didn’t want. I played something else, you still didn’t want. There are always reasons not to believe.

I knew it refers to somewhere in the Bible when Jesus was talking about John the Baptist. I had to go search.

John came as a typical ‘Man of God’. He lived in seclusion, didn’t touch alcohol, had habits that set him apart from ‘normal human beings’, and he was brutally vocal against the sins of the government and leading figures of the day. The sort of man I would feel the need to clean up and be on my best behaviour to meet.

Jesus is quite the opposite. He loved living with people, he drank and feasted, and took anyone as a friend – sex workers, religious leaders and Roman colonial officials alike.

John came like a funeral song. Jesus came with a disco ball. Yet, they preached the same message of repentance, purity and love. And both were not believed. John is a crazy, rude man. He is too mad to be from God. Jesus is a drunk. How on earth could we listen to him?

There are always reasons to not believe. There will never be an undisputable answer on this earth that will satisfy all my doubts. That is the nature of my human heart. Still, whether or not I believe, it doesn’t change anything. There is still so much more.

“To what can I compare the people of this generation?” Jesus asked. “How can I describe them? They are like children playing a game in the public square. They complain to their friends,

‘We played wedding songs,
    and you didn’t dance,
so we played funeral songs,
    and you didn’t weep.’

For John the Baptist didn’t spend his time eating bread or drinking wine, and you say, ‘He’s possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it.”

(Luke 7:31-35)

There is more is a personal outpouring from a walk out of the dark of doubt, something that Christians don’t speak enough about.