As humans we are social creatures. From early childhood, we tend to gravitate towards others to interact with. As we grew and matured we likely found some social circles loosing appeal, while we were finding other circles more attractive.
As someone who was raised in fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity, many of the circles I felt at home in were tied to my religious roots. From a young age I was taught to be skeptical of those that did not share similar beliefs and practices with me. It was OK to be "friendly" with those outside my circles, but I needed to remember that I was in the circle, and they were outside the circle.
As I’ve written before, I am on my third deconstruction/reconstruction(?) over the past almost 3 decades. Each time I have deconstructed I find old circles where I no longer feel at home. This doesn’t mean these circles weren’t of value, at least for a season, but they no longer were a part of shaping and molding me into the person I was becoming.
My first two D/R experiences feel like minor shifts compared to my current deconstruction. My first, when I was 18, was a move away from fundamentalism and finding what faith was my own vs. just carrying on the faith my parents and others around me possessed. My second, about a decade later, was more of a shift from the American Christian Nationalism circle I had occupied from childhood into a two-kingdom theology.
Deconstruction number 3 goes deeper and is trying to strip away the countless layers to find out if the circles I’ve occupied actually have a solid foundation, or if they are one layer of veneer on top of countless more layers of veneer. Looking at it another way, if you have enough sheets of paper stacked up you can stop a bullet. But when each piece of paper is removed, the whole becomes more vulnerable if there isn’t something more solid at the foundation. Most days I want to find out if there is something at the root of it all, or if I’ve just been convinced that I’m in safer circles than the alternatives.
During my first two bouts with deconstruction, the wrestling was more internal than external. As a teen and later as a 20-something, I hadn’t found the courage or voice to admit that I wasn’t sure about what I’d been taught to believe. As someone whose almost as close to 90 years old as I am to the day I was born, I’m either finding my voice or at least the courage to say the questions and doubts I have out loud.
As I continue to strip away the layers that have built up, not only over my lifetime but also the millennia before me, I find that more and more people in the circles I’ve occupied no longer are comfortable around me. For some, their faith is so fragile, that the idea of asking certain questions becomes paramount to pulling the rug out from under them. So, instead of considering the legitimacy of any questions, they shrink the size of their circle to eliminate those that make them uncomfortable. And, for others, the dogmatism of their circles make me uncomfortable, and as someone who wants better for my sons than I had, I have distanced myself from their circles.
For the last week or so I’ve had a CD in my van as I’m driving. I remembering buying this CD more than 20 years ago while I was on vacation, visiting my sister in Orlando. And while I’ve liked this album for decades, the lyrics of several songs hit closer to home now than when I was an angsty youth in my mid 20’s.
And I'd get lost in the nothingness inside of me
And I let it all out to find that I'm not the only person with these things in mind (inside of me)
But all the vacancy the words revealed
Is the only real thing that I got left to feel (nothing to lose)
Just stuck, hollow and alone
I want to heal, I want to feel,
What I thought was never real
I want to let go of the pain I felt so long (erase all the pain 'til it's gone)
I want to heal, I want to feel
Like I'm close to something real
I want to find something I've wanted all along
(Linkin Park “Somewhere I Belong”)
While my wife and I often find we have more in common with Xennials, over Gen-X or Millennials, when it comes to this song and the sort of feelings it entails, I wonder if I have more Gen-X in me than I often acknowledge.
Just a few songs later, on the same album, the artist acknowledges it’s “Easier to Run”, than to face some difficult aspects of life.
All of the helplessness inside
Pretending I don't feel misplaced
Is so much simpler than change
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone
It’s easier to run from what we actually feel, when conformity is such a highly held virtue in our circles. But as a result, we wind up hiding from the genuine questions we have, and wind up being just a façade of the real us.
Finishing off the album is the song “Numb”, which probably sums up my current feeling regarding many who have tried to make sure I didn’t leave their circles over my nearly 4 and a half decades of life.
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
I don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
Can't you see that you're smothering me?
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
And I know I may end up failing too
But I know you were just like me
With someone disappointed in you
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
When I first listened to the album Meteora, in early 2003, I had no idea how much I would resonate with the lyrics decades later. But being created as a social creature, I still long to find Somewhere I Belong. But, as I seek to uncover truth in my faith journey, I sometimes feel Numb, and realize it’s Easier to Run than risk falling under the spell of those who would seek to conform me to their image, instead of the image of the One I still believe I want to conform to. I also hope that my journey ends differently than the singer who sang these songs. In 2017, Chester Bennington took his own life.
