unexpected insight in the question of god

the most poignant part of tonight's part 1 of the question of god on pbs wasn't, for me, any of the insights of the participants about whether god exists, are miracles possible, &c. (on a side note, i understood this to be a debut, but i swear i've seen parts of it before; perhaps i just really, really wanted there to be a show like this and i created it in my malanky little mind, yes?) the insight came with something the actor playing c.s. lewis said. describing the events leading to his conversion, our intellectually asute and physically doughy (he did smoke a lot, which was endearing) "lewis" alluded to a sense of being hemmed in, run down, hedged about. the gist was that the fox, lewis, was being run to ground, and he was simply tiring of the chase. the insight i had is: that's me! i've been a believer for about 18 years, but the past few have been one dogfight after another -- is there really a god, or did we just make this crap up? (that little intellectual crisis usually hits me, oh, about 11:22 on sunday morning when "the voice" whispers "pssst -- you know this is just a load of hooey, right?) who was jesus? what to make of the jesus seminar? why do i bristle w/ equal vehemence @ the terms "journey," "ultimate reality" and "going deep"? (they're more fitted to be, respectively, a band, a predictably bad offering on fox wednesdays, and what manny does w/ regularity off lesser humans: pitchers.) how'm i ever gonna convince every intellectual and college student of the truth of christianity w/ all my unanswered questions rattling about my brain?

lewis' answer was to go to his knees by his bed and say "god is god." i believe i'm in need of some o' that. not only is it true that god is god, and i'm not; chesterton is chesterton, and i'm not. lewis is lewis, kreeft is kreeft, howard is howard, and i'm not. so stop trying to be them, mr. prancibald! (that was for me, btw) realize you're more of an "i once was blind but now i see" guy than a "the existential imperative points irrefutably to green polka-dotted shower caps" kind of guy. it is more than likely that i shall never find myself driven to read the hippolytus of euripides. but do i know some things? yeah -- i know i believe in god, and i know he believes in me. i know i love my daughter. i know my wife is the surest evidence of a benevolent god that i experience on a daily basis. and i know that i'm not called, gifted, what have you, to be ravi zacharias. and this fox is tired of running from seemingly infinite conundra (conundrums?). there is a rest that comes at the end of the day, though, and it is grounded in having tried to be holy, failed miserably (often publicly), and learned, anew, the hard fact of forgiveness. if i got nothing else from part 1 of the show, i saw lewis kneel.