The wrong way to Chick-fil-a (An Intro to this Blog)

Strange fact:  I own up to an odd fascination with maps.  I'm no professionally trained cartographer, but for whatever reason I love maps.  I can pour over an atlas looking at places I have never been and will likely never go.  Weeks and months before a major road trip I begin to stake out my routes, the topography, the layout of the city.  There is never a trip that goes by where I do not consult the atlas or Google maps and I know exactly what I am going to do.  

Another strange fact:  The long drive I make most often (my cornfield to the Music City) is also the only trip I've ever gotten lost on. I made a wrong turn.  A big wrong turn.  I started driving home on the wrong interstate.  As it turned out this accidental route wasn't that much slower but it had a unexpected advantage over our pre-planned route...Chick-fil-a!!!   





Its funny.  With all the maps, GPS units, Google Maps, real-time weather reports and traffic breakdowns available to us we now choose our route home based more on how we answer the following question:  do we have a craving for a chicken sandwich? With all of the technology available, we choose our route home based on an obsession for the best use of poultry on our planet. Sometimes the things you don't plan on end up being better than the things you do plan on.  Life is funny that way.  Why share that story?

I think that story is an interesting parallel to my spiritual journey.  Most people (spiritual or not) will admit that as long as we are on this Earth we have not "arrived."  If we think we are at the end of our journey but we are still breathing, then we really aren't at the of our journey.  We are still traveling.  

In my own life, I knew my journey wasn't over but I thought I had everything mapped out.  I was raised as an evangelical Baptist Christian, I never strayed from the faith in my teenage and college years, I trained to be a minister in the faith, I've studied to be able to defend it, and I knew I would stay on that path.  I had it all mapped out.  

But somewhere along the way I took a wrong a turn.  Or rather, I took a turn I didn't mean to take.  I asked some questions about faith and theology and truth.  The answers I got were unexpected.  I looked at my surroundings and they didn't look familiar.  I was not on the road I had planned to be on.  I didn't mean to be here, I didn't set out to travel this road.  

AAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!  What a huge waste of time this wrong turn is.... but wait... is that a Chick-fil-a?

The reason I want to explain this in my first post is that I want to avoid the charge of intentionally trying to leave my evangelical Baptist faith behind.  I didn't wake up one morning and decide, "hey, I'd like to ditch everything I've worked on all my life."  I didn't slowly withdraw myself from my theological moorings through carelessness or sloth.  I didn't ask to put myself in this position.  I simply asked some questions and I honestly believe the answers have taken me on this path.  

Rest assured, I did not begin my "journey" by deciding on my destination first!  So it is not as if I am hell-bent on being Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Community, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, or Emerging.  I set out on my journey looking for the truth as I feel where I am may not have all of the truth.  While I may not have left with the intention of being a permanent resident elsewhere, God may have other plans.

That is what this blog is ultimately about: my rather unexpected spiritual journey.  I'd say I took my "unexpected turn" bout 2.5 or 3 years ago and ever since then I've been driving without a comprehensive atlas or any idea of where my journey is taking me.  There are times where I think I may backtrack and try to get on the old path... but I would have to have some solid truth for doing so.  Many times I feel the answers are pointing me down the road towards the Catholic or Orthodox faiths.  Somedays I feel everything is so hopelessly subjective that perhaps the more post-modern or emerging/emergent Church may be my final destination.  

This is my journey.  This is the point of the blog.  I'll make a few pitstops and see some sights along the way (in the form of some sillier, more common posts), but the main purpose is deciding which faith-path to take.  I do not know where my journey will end and I think therein lies the fun in this blog; you and I have to wait to see what happens next.  

I appreciate your prayers and encouragement through this adventure.  

David Peru