Why am I doing this?

So… why am I doing this? Good question.

The reason actually goes back several years. In 2007 I felt lost. It was a particularly tough year for several reasons: I had a death in the family, significant turmoil in some of my closest relationships, and an overall disconnect with any sense of purpose or direction. I had also drifted far away from God. I was holding onto some serious doubts about God, religion and spirituality that had me questioning everything about myself, the world and what this whole life thing is all about.

As I came to my birthday in September of that year I had this strong feeling that I needed a serious change. And then that little voice in the back of my head spoke to me. You know the voice. The one that tells you what you should do even when you do the exact opposite anyways.

Yeah that voice.

The conversation went something like this:

Voice: You need to slow down.

Me: Huh?

Voice: You heard me fool!

Me: Oh umm…

Voice: yep. You need to do a fast. Do it.

Me: No.

Voice: *silence*

Me: but why?

Voice: *more silence*

Me: But I don’t want to. I’ve never done it before. I don’t see why I have to do it. Blah blah blah etc etc.

Voice: you done yet?

Me: yes.

Voice: Do the fast.

Me: Damn

So I decided that I needed to do a fast. But what to do?

So I figured, go hard or go home. I did the dreaded master cleanse (great choice for fasting but yikes it is pretty severe. I have no idea why folk use it as a diet... not a good look.). I also committed to not watch TV or go on the internet for the duration of the 10 days and finally to pray and read my bible; two things I had not done with any regularity in quite some time.

It was a powerful experience.

In those 10 days I learned a lot about myself but most importantly me and God got back on speaking terms again. On the 7^th day when I was talking to God about all my doubts and hang ups regarding organized religion and specifically Christianity. God responded with a proposition. He challenged me to read the entire bible again.

Umm… don’t know about that one Sir.

The last few months of the year came and went and this challenge kept coming back to the front of my mind. As 2008 was approaching a good friend of mine expressed an interest in reading the bible as well and pointed me to a website that had a bible in one year program. So now I had a challenge, a plan to do it, and a friend for moral support…

So finally I responded to God with the following:

“OK… here’s the deal. I will read the bible next year. And I will do my best to not make any judgments until the year is done just like you suggested. But if I still have the same fundamental questions then I’m gonna look elsewhere. Deal?”

Deal.

I started Jan 1^st 2008 and by the end of January all of the previous doubts I had were gone. They were replaced with new questions of course but with each new question my faith got stronger and me and God got closer. By the end of this year long conversation with God my whole way of looking at the world changed, dramatically, for the better.

Throughout that year my friend and I were like… it would be cool to blog about this.

And here we are now.

I have that feeling that it’s time to read through it again and that maybe there are other people who feel the same way that I felt before. Maybe you don’t have a friend to do it with you like I did. Maybe you don’t want to commit to reading the whole thing but want God to be your friend again. Maybe you don’t even believe in the existence of a higher power but find this whole exercise interesting enough to take a look. Or maybe you enjoy clowning folk for misspelled words and grammatical errors (there will be many).

It’s all good.

I’m not a bible scholar or some kind of self professed holy man. I do not possess any authoritative understanding or truth. I’m just a person who likes to ask questions; and maybe together we can work towards some answers.

In the process I believe magical things will happen.

I will follow the bible in one year schedule on www.odb.org. It tends to be about 15 or 20 minutes of reading per day. Some days I will talk about the actual scripture, other days I may talk about something going on in the world or in my life. Basically I will talk about whatever I want… hopefully it will all come back to whatever we are reading together. Perhaps some of you will be guest writers from time to time!

Feel free to comment and participate. Let’s have fun, discuss, agree, disagree, debate, share and build each other up. I generally won’t remove comments unless someone says something that’s just entirely out of pocket or damaging or hurtful to what we are trying to do here. This is a place where everyone should feel welcome regardless of your background. Judgmental terribleness must be checked at the door.

Welcome and enjoy!