A Home for the Restless (revised)

A Home for the Restless
David Fournier, Restoring Grace

Song-Still Breathing
“As I walked out on the ledge
Are you scared to death to live?
I've been running all my life
Just to find a home that's for the restless
And the truth that's in the message
Making my way, away, away”
Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day

I have failed. Looking back over my life, I realized I bought into the idea of the world needing to be saved, hook, line and sinker. I truly believed that we could all live a life of endless happiness with a simple conversion to Christianity. I was convinced that people who suffered from issues, had problems in their lives, disease and depression, have these problems because they were somehow disconnected from Jesus. If they would repent-turn around and increase their faith (along with Bible reading, tithing and church attendance) all things would go well.

As I grew older, my life became more complicated. I got married, had children, worked for a living, went to church, became a pastor, you know, all the right things. I was sure that God was blessing me and I was on the right path. What I failed to realize is that life is messy, and I needed to be okay with messy. The messier it got, the more frustrated I became and I started making really poor decisions. My decisions had huge impact on my family, my friends and the people that believed I was leading them in the right direction.

I don’t mean this article to be a confession of all my life failures, I am pretty sure it would take volumes to describe and even more volumes to ask forgiveness. The point of this article is to address the fact that I realize that all life, everyone’s life, is a very difficult boat to row. As I have aged, I am learning a whole new set of tools that help me adjust and understand the challenges that lie ahead and be able to embrace the fact that life is messy, difficult and restless.

I am perplexed by the things I believed were the end of the world. The battles over religious issues, who keeps putting the milk back in the fridge empty, what is acceptable behavior by my children out in public, who actually let the dogs out, and now the new and improved social-media-political-experts, rage on like wildfire. Now I look back and realize I was trying to place my life in an acceptable order, looking good on the outside and hoping that it would make my life good on the inside.

The ultimate irony is I have become the person I used to preach against.

Believing that people with problems are somehow “spiritual deficient” I distanced myself from them, often accusing them of their lack of religious authenticity. I am not just a hypocrite, I am a failed hypocrite. But in my failure, came a version of myself that while I am not that person I would suggest anyone follows (I often say I am a poor example of a Christian), I feel for the first time in my life, is genuine.

It became genuine when I realized that life is restless and I needed a home for the restless. We are not perfect, we won’t become perfect anytime soon, and my lack of perfection gives me more reason to be patient, loving and understanding with the people around me. Instead of pretending that all is well, my life is in order and hide my reality to project a successful spiritual image, I have embraced the fact that for me, I have been scared to death to live, to admit my failures and move on from them.

Picture Jesus, who lives a life from the documents we have about him, for the benefit of others, cared for people, healed people, fed people. In the end, he is nailed to a cross for his efforts, a sign that here is what happens to people who step out of the accepted norms. But even in the writings of Jesus, we sense that restlessness, the feeling that he too was somehow far from home. And he talks about all of us finding the end to our restlessness in a Kingdom where restlessness is embraced and welcomed.

I guess I make for a poor fundamentalist. I don’t pretend to have all the answers and I know that I will struggle with them for my entire life. What has changed for me is the understanding that not only is the struggle for real, it is okay. New Testament author Paul says we are to “struggle” with our salvation, to work it out with” fear and trembling”. Sure enough, one of the most prolific contributors to the New Testament tells us it will be messy.

Leave it to me to find inspiration in the lyrics of Green Day, but this is far from my first time with them. Somehow we have dressed up our faith so clean and tidy we have forgotten the daily battles and struggles that we all face. This is creating a squeaky clean version of the faith that has pushed away the people that feel like they will never measure up, never feel welcome among the ranks. We have been sucked into a societal influence that dictates how we will measure our success. How may times have heard someone say “this isn’t where I thought I would be at this point of my life”? Here is the good news, you are still alive and where there is life, there is hope. Even if it is messy.

For me, all the efforts I spent in “projecting an image of success and spirituality” was a waste of precious life and resources. I want to be at home with my restlessness, with my failures, with my life. I don’t have a hundred years left to figure it out. I want the “truth that is in the message”, so true and with so much clarity that no one needs to explain to me and justify it to me. Truth: like being kind, sharing, caring for those in need, exercising love and not judgment. You know, these kinds of truths.

We can all improve our lives by being who we are and as we are. Remove the vexation of the spiritual pressures of the outside world revel in the simple truth, Jesus loves you just as you are, right now and forever.

David Fournier in the Senior Instructor at Restoring Grace. David teaches classes on Hebraic Perspectives, Early Christian Communities and New Testament Formations and Canon. David is available for your church, youth group, seminars and retreats. Email David at: dfour26@gmail.com

What if God was All of Us???

In the hit series by HBO called Game of Thrones, the characters range from violent killers to seductive maidens. Murder, deceit, failed overthrows and surprise killings mark the series from opening moment to end of episode. One of the constant themes of the show has to do with various alliances to different gods. There are single god believers, multiple god believers and of course, the ever mischievous followers of the “Lord of Light”.

These different believers and their differing belief systems will gladly toss off your head or kill a village of innocents based on the “readings” they get from their god(s). Sound familiar?

By the way, there are also dragons, but that doesn’t really fit into this article.

The fact of the matter is that throughout human history, people have done what they believed to be “acts” required of them or instructed to them by their god(s). For example:

Chants of “Allah Akbar” (God is Great) are chanted while women and children are beheaded for being “impure believers”

1359 CE- 350 towns in Germany murder Jews by burning them alive for being “Christ Killers”. In this year alone, more Jews are killed than the entire 200-year period of Roman persecution of the “Christians”. (Also killings performed in the name of the Lord Caesar).

1648 CE, 200,000 (read it again) 200,000 killed the area of Chiemlnitzki, Poland, during a “purging” of Christians

Era of the Witch Burnings- 1484-1750 (approx.)

Several hundred thousand killed, with books published by the church on how to discover, interrogate, torture and eventually execute witches. Historical records estimate that 70-80% of those killed were women.

1580 CE, Jean Borden writes in his instructions, Punishment Deserved by Witches, “Don’t wait for solid evidence to begin examination, torture or punishment, for if we did, only one in a million would be punished”. The reason Jean Borden gave for this type of enforcement? To appease God, of course.

I point out these examples because as we all know, violence in the name of god(s) has millions of examples and as it seems, no known cure. I picked these examples because they rank from modern cases to relatively unknown events.

There is no way humanly possible that we could absorb all the death, destruction, genocide, murder, war, rape, torture, and reckless use of natural resources, poverty and evil that has been performed by humans in the name(s) of god(s). We even go to war over which one of these god(s) is the true god…

Simply put, I reject in all cases and forms of religious practice that any god, a deity with creative powers and loving concern for their creation, is capable of requiring or even asking their followers to commit acts of atrocities against other humans. I believe that religions today are following a god(s) they created in their image, not the other way around. Here are a few examples:



When your god agrees with your theology, your beliefs, condones all you condone and hates what you hate, at the expense of all others

We have a god in our own image

When some of your god’s rules and laws apply to you and some don’t

We have a god in our own image

When your service to your god benefits your life, your finances, that god is your personal god (like a personal pizza, all about you)

We have a god in our own image


When your god is the one true god to the exclusion of all others

We have a god in our own image


When your god has you charging admission to your “worship” events

We have a god in our own image


When your god has you using a pulpit or teaching in a sacred space to assist in the election of public officials (who by the way would undoubtedly support your god’s view)

We have a god in our own image

While advances in modern science, history, geology, biology and physics have given us greater insights into humanity and understanding our origins, you would prefer to listen to some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues

We have a god in our own image

Still here?

When it comes to thoughts about god(s), people are just making this stuff up. Much to the detriment of humanity, people are assuming the role of god(s), speaking for god(s) and the effect is horrific. As a country, as a faith group, as people of the world, we have never been more separated, confused and isolated, regardless of what Google tells you.


Do we create god(s) in our own fearful images?


A study conducted by Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, asked people who believed in the Abrahamic God for their opinions on controversial issues such as abortion, death penalty and same-sex marriage. They were asked what they believed the views of God, of ordinary Americans, and of well-known public figures were. Perhaps not surprisingly, their own views most closely resembled what they regarded as God’s views (even though those views were different from believer to believer)


The experimenters scanned believers’ brains while they were thinking about their own views, those they ascribed to God, and those they ascribed to “average Americans”. The experimenters found that when the believers thought about their own their own views or God’s, the same area of the brain was active. But when they thought about the views of other people, a different area of the brain-an area associated with discerning the mental states of others-was active.

The experiment lends itself to a single conclusion: While people can readily make a distinction between their views and those of other people, they are far less likely to make a distinction between their views and God’s. Basically, people map God’s beliefs (as they see them) onto their own. This necessarily wouldn’t be a bad thing unless of course you actually read the beginning sections of this article.

I am not trying to make a point about; 1) There is no God, as I believe in God. 2) It’s not always bad to have your ideology congruent with your belief and practice of your God, (unless of course this includes beheading or acts of violence), 3) All gods are man-made gods. There are man-made gods, like the god of Creflo Dollar, who needs a 68 million dollar airplane to spread the gospel around the world. (Seems inefficient, can’t we train people in those areas and let them spread the gospel?)

With all this available “god-help”, there are a few unanswered questions for me. Why does mankind find itself lost in a disordered world overrun by chaos, an existence riddled with pain and unspeakable suffering? Why do we find ourselves in a material dimension that knows only decay and death, a reality governed by the Law of Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that everything must deteriorate and corrode over time?

Something went wrong.



Somewhere along the line there was a disconnection. Mankind lost touch with its true origins. All of us, forgot about God and starting developing religions to assist us in understanding God, but later these religions served to erase God and insert mankind as the new and improved version of god(s).

How can we recover from our path of personal deity and return to God? What can we begin to work on right away that can start to turn the tide from a man-run religious effort to a God-based lifestyle?

Fair warning as we move forward. I am a Christian (albeit a very poor example of one), so I am going to approach this from a Christian understanding. You can insert any teachings or ideas from your own faith traditions that make sense.

First, Yeshua (aka Jesus), a Jewish Rabbi from the 1st Century taught several God-like lessons. One of His greatest (my opinion here) was Jesus instructing us to “bless our enemies, bless and curse not”. This is a godly trait. Praying for your enemies often relieves the feeling you need to kill them. Understanding that all mankind has a place in this universe and that all mankind (regardless of the choices they make) are God’s creation helps us to act out godliness, which in my mind is the core element of the New Testament documents.

Second, quit confusing the kingdoms. Obviously God lives in another Kingdom, a spiritual realm and by most standards, plans to guide us through our human existence to a time where His Kingdom will reign and this earthly kingdom will be over. We cannot and nor should we in the name of our god(s), God, attempt to legislate morality based on our Scriptures, doctrine and dogma. There will be a time and place for Kingdom rule, but here on earth we are to live out our days helping people see the benefits of godly living rather than clubbing religious ideals (which vary widely from one Christianity to another) into the ballot boxes.

Do you realize we could legislate all the right morals, elect all the right officials and not come close to any of the instructions left by Jesus?

Lastly, most religious groups hold to some kind of an idea that the world will end and their group (of course) will have a huge supper celebrating the ultimate defeat of evil. I like a good meal as much as the next guy, but I think it’s an adventure of missing the point.

Is it possible that the people of this world would at some point come to a realization: We aren’t suffering from a lack of religions. We are suffering from a lack of compassion. Endless reports of poverty, poor living conditions, unfair wages, slave trading, global war and so on tell us that whatever our belief in our god(s) may be, it is translating to very little difference in the world.

There can be no greater proof of a Living God that cares for His creation then people who claim to follow that God caring for His creation. If you belief in God leads you any other direction, I suggest that you have created a god in your own image.

In the Book of Psalms, attributed the King David, the Psalmist says, “I would have fainted unless I had longed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”.

I can’t speak for God and I wish preachers and the self-anointed/self-appointed would stop speaking for Him. I can only be His action here on earth. That leads me to believe that God would want me to love, nourish and support His creation. Because, that’s what I believe He is doing.