Permission to Rest

I already wrote about Saying Goodbye to Jesus. However I forgot to include a very important part of my final conversation with Jesus.

The missing part was: in effect, I asked, “Do I have permission to rest? I think all the questions might literally be affecting my sanity and making me psychotic, since I feel like I have to try to solve them or answer them. So can I stop asking them? Can I set all of them aside indefinitely while I focus on my mental health?”

Specifically, I asked, “Do I have permission to stop asking these questions like these –

• Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
• Was the Universe created in 7 24 hour days?
• Is the Bible the Word of God and what does that even mean anyway?
• Does God really want women not to have equal roles with men?
• Does God really find same sex romantic or intimate relationships evil?
• What do I even believe, anyway? Why does it matter? Why can’t I just keep things really simple, and just try to be kind to others? Do I have permission to do that?
• Do I have permission to rest from all these seemingly endless, difficult to answer, exhausting, questions?“

Actually I see now that Saying Goodbye to Jesus was also about me asking permission not to do all sorts of stuff I thought Christians were supposed to do. So I could protect my mental health. What I’m writing about here goes deeper, in a sense. It was about me asking for permission not to even think about what I believe or don’t believe.

I don’t know whether I literally got an answer or not.

But if I did, then I am as sure as I am of anything that this is what Jesus said

Absolutely, totally, unquestionably, yes!

Do whatever you need to do, to take care of yourself.

So, if Jesus said that, I’m as sure as anything that he said it with a smile of friendship. And with eye contact that showed me he absolutely heard me and he meant every word of it.

For what it’s worth, by that point of my life I’d spent 17 years in close conversation with him. So I think it’s reasonable to believe that I would recognize his voice. That I would hear and understand what he was saying to me in our final conversation.