Over the years I had visited my mom’s church to be nice to her and see some family. I drifted in and out of considering myself an atheist, then a pantheist, then a panentheist. Ethically, relativism seemed incompatible with the way we actually live our lives or raise our children because all of us teach our kids, and believe deep down, that some things are just plain wrong to do; I was a moral realist. Sociological and evolutionary-psychology explanations for ethics were unconvincing but I still I believed that intelligent and thoughtful people could study themselves and the natural order using scientific means to discover moral truths and how best to live, having the happiest kind of life.

But a few years into my journey I felt that I could never live long enough, conduct enough experiments, be smart enough or read enough books in the span of a lifetime to quite figure out the big questions about Life. Is there a purpose to it all, any inherent meaning? Am I really just a random co-location of atoms and chemical processes, the result of time + matter + chance? My mind and my emotions, the part of me that believes in free-will, my personality, is that all an illusion? How did I evolve to have these particular thoughts, feelings and questions? Why could I not deny that I yearned to live a life of significance, where did that come from?!

I  discovered that using the scientific method by dissecting life into tiny, examinable bits was like high school biology class. Much could be learned about a cat by dissecting it – its respiratory system, its muscles and sinews. Only when the experiment is finished you have nothing like a cat left at all. You have facts about the cat but you are far from the real thing anymore. The playful, aloof creature who sits on your lap and purrs when you pet him is gone. Or scientifically answer this question: What is the truth of a kiss? Two sets of mandibles pressing together for a certain duration of time? (examples taken from John Eldredge)

Self-help gurus like Tony Robbins, Mike Brescia, Mark Victor Hansen, Brian Tracy and Earl Nightingale were people who made life-long studies of happiness. Well, success and happiness because they obviously go together, right? I would make these men my teachers, I would sit at their feet with my headphones, my car stereo, my iPod and my laptop and learn how to be happy! Since that was simply the only thing I could do I would not waste any more of the time I had in this life, I would pursue success and happiness as ends in themselves.

I studied neuro-linguistic programming so that I could learn what Tony Robbins knew and taught and I got certified as a practitioner. Hours upon hours of listening to CDs and podcasts, writing and rewriting lists of dreams and goals, filling in my journal, deciding what my values were and using them to guide my decisions and determine my goals, seemed to work! I had gained the love of a capable, beautiful young woman who became my wife. I ascended to a six-figure income in a job where I worked from home virtually any time I wished with four weeks of paid vacation per year. My two sons were healthy and thriving. We vacationed in Jamaica, Florida and Disney World, the Poconos and the American southwest including the Grand Canyon and Sedona. We had hundreds of pictures of all of the fun we were having and beautiful smiles were on our faces. To top it all off, my wife and I were able to procure our dream home, a beautiful 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath with hickory hardwood floors, an inground pool and screen porch on a forested acre! I literally believed that I had it all: love, health, a measure of affluence, and every material possession that I desired. At this point, the only thing left on my todo list was self-employment so that I might enjoy even greater freedom and self-determinism, my next step up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  All of the most successful people were self-employed according to my self-help gurus and so I wanted to be too.

But right about then I took a punch in the gut.

For months, especially since purchasing our dream home, my wife had been distant and non-communicative. The conversation we had most often was this one:

Me: Honey, what’s wrong?

Wife: Nothing.

Me: Nothing? Then why are you not talking to me? Why have you stopped hugging me? Why don’t you even reply when I say I love you?

Wife: I’m mad at you.

Me: About what?!

Wife: I don’t want to talk about it.

So it went for months. When she finally spoke she unleashed an unexpected torrent of bitterness and angry accusations that left me breathless, then defensive, then demanding, then scared. I had never imagined spending the rest of my life without her and now I could tell that this was what she had in mind, she had just lacked the courage to say it out loud.

And so she left.

There are a few chapters of a book contained in “she left”. The chapters could catalog the uncharacteristic and outrageous things we said and did to each other after it happened.  She filed for divorce three weeks later and the divorce was made legal just seven months after that.

The dream home was unaffordable on my income alone and full of the ghosts of future dreams that would never be so I left it, moved 2400 miles away, got a new job, made some new friends, lost weight, drove and hiked all over the state, took pictures and displayed them on Facebook.

And something else happened too.

Part of me wishes I could say it was some deep intellectual insight, the overwhelming power of evidence and a logical argument that collapsed the last wall in me but it wasn’t. I’ve often wished that my abundance alone, all the good things I had in life were enough to bring me home but they weren’t either.

The last barrier was an emotional one. It was rooted in memories of a flawed father that God didn’t “fix” before he died at 47 of pancreatic cancer. It was built on images of my mother’s face, fatigued and beleaguered, raising four kids with little assistance. It sounded like well-meaning people’s voices saying stupid, hurtful, religious things. It was maintained by pain. After so many years of intellectually assaulting the ramparts of biblical Christianity and finding that it withstood my meager onslaught quite well, my lone defense against admitting so was an emotional one. That hurt little boy inside had a few things to get over first.

It is paradoxical that my wife leaving, causing gut-wrenching grief and disillusionment, should be a catalyst to getting over things but it was because it eliminated her as a consideration. First, I had grown up in a contentious home and church/god/religion was a part of the contention. Dad wanted nothing to do with church most of the time and Mom needed it. I stayed away partly because I was afraid that the same thing would happen in my marriage if I suggested church and God as something we needed or forged ahead on my own without her.  Second, with her not around I could focus on Me & God & scripture as I went about my day-to-day life and not Me & Her + a little God on the side while I peered over my shoulder for her reactions. I would’ve been too self-conscious with her around and too focused on her feelings to get to where I am now.

So where am I now?

At peace. I mean really, truly, deeply at peace. Amazingly excited for the future, full of a sense of purpose and passion like I’ve not felt since… well, maybe ever! I have answers for the big life questions that give me a framework within which to live my life and make sense of it, answers that cohere and come from a transcendent source of meaning. It begins and ends with a person and I have it as my ongoing daily experience.

“I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You’ve even seen him!” (Jesus, John 14:6 ‘The Message’)

Like many of you, I dislike the insider’s lingo and people who speak Christianese like those garish televangelists who sell Jesus with all the cynicism of a used car salesman. Most of us have learned a conditioned response that instantly closes our minds and ears to that crap. But distaste and skepticism should prompt us to do more than just change the station. We should follow a line of questioning to it’s end, not just intellectually but emotionally and experientially as well, all the while being as honest with ourselves as we can. If all truth is God’s truth and if He is The Truth, our persistent, sincere questioning can only lead to Him.

It’s been a long journey back to his loving, healing community called Church, a long way back to Him, back to Home.

It’s good to be home.