Edit: I wrote my first post immediately after the event, posted it, then I slept on it, then woke up to realize what I was actually trying to say.
I've come face to face with the fact that I not only don't have all of the answers to questions on Christian theology, but what few questions I do have answered are painful for me to articulate. The former does not unsettle me - it is the latter that gave me difficulty when confronted with a Catholic priest who told me he wasn't trying to convert anyone to Christianity, that "If they are in my pew and happy, then I'm happy for them."
I'm scared that my friends who invited me to this mass may not know Jesus. What's more, I am scared that I don't know what it means to know Jesus. Last night I tried to articulate the importance of the spiritual relationship and the three-parts of spirit, soul, and body that make up a person. It was fumbling, it didn't make sense. I couldn't get my emotional truths out of my mouth. I was dismissed.
It struck me to know that for all of my sureness in my Christianity, I could not stutter out one convincing sentence in the face of someone who was content to leave this whole Jesus thing out of the matter, telling me that making people more human was enough, that improving humanity was the goal.
I could not get out the emotions, experiences, and knowledge that was in me, so I was left staring at the things in me wondering what were they, really, after all? How useful can the knowledge I have be if I can not disseminate it - if I can not spread the Word? I could not even get words out when speaking to someone who I should be able to have the same basic understandings with, but it was like we were speaking a different language.
Dr. Tran taught it my Heritage class that Theology is a language about God.
In this regard I have learned I am as good as mute.
I will likely never be a great apologist (I give room for possibility because I'm only 23 and God can do as He fancies). I come to the discussion table with emotional truths, some of which I truly can not put into orally-spoken words without losing a bit of their gravitas and meaning. But I know that I should have been able to hold my ground on something, I should have had something memorized that was stark truth and unchangeable. None of the Creeds came to mind. Not even "Jesus Christ is the Son of God, begotten, not made."
I do not know yet how to change this. For now, this is simply a marker of where I am.
