God in the room

I've lived the Christian world-view most of my life.  My father was  pastor of a protestant church and I spent a lot of time participating in church activities.  But contrary to popular opinion, I don't believe that Christianity comes by osmosis.  All that church experience did not make me a believer.  It just made me a church goer (and an obedient child).

Around the middle of high school I began to question Christianity as a valid belief.  I didn't feel any of the things other people talked about, and I certainly knew I wasn't really all that in to religion and the daily demands of being a pastor's kid.  Around this time I heard someone pray in a most astounding way - she just talked to God like he was in the room and responding.  I thought she was a little weird. Then I went off to summer camp, and wouldn't you know, the speaker was equally weird. He talked to God like he was right there in the room.  In addition, the speaker acted like belief in Jesus was something real, not just something you did but someone you knew.  Never had I thought about faith in this way.  I wanted what he had. So I took the leap and talked to God like he was in the room.

Nothing magical happened, I just knew I'd stepped out on a different path, and I've continued on it ever since. I started out a lot more rigid than I am today, but over time a lot of the rough edges have rubbed off.  I've had a couple crises of faith in the ensuing years, and came through those crises believing even more.  The most recent was when my mother died.  I had this romantic notion that Jesus would come and carry her away to heaven. Instead it was a nightmare of panicked breathing and excruciating heart break. In the middle of it all I wondered if I'd been believing in a pack of lies, If God really never existed and I'd been skipping merrily down an ignorant path. And there in that moment was God. I can't explain it, but I know it.  In my doubt he gave me certainty. When I was ready to throw in the towel, he was there to take me through the most awful experience of my life. He was there

I know that's one of the biggest obstacles for people, that step from rational thinking to belief.  I read an autobiography of a man who shared his story of searching for God via his intellect.  He spent a lot of time reading and talking to believers and came to the rational conclusion that God existed.  He even believed that Jesus was more than a man. But he realized that beyond all his rational, factual, intellectual conclusions, there was still a more difficult step of accepting the things that can't be empirically proven, like someone dying in our place.  He compared it to climbing up a mountain of research and arriving at the top only to discover the rest of the journey was on another mountain and the only way to reach it was to jump - and the gap appeared impossibly wide. He decided to return from where he'd come, but when he turned around he found there was no going back, he knew too much. So he jumped.

I consider my self a rational thinker who has rationally accepted the fact that I cannot know or prove all things.  God, the tenets of Christianity, much of the human experience cannot be discerned by rational thinking. There is something more. Faith falls into the something more.  Through my life experience I've found faith to be real and solid.

I believe that Christianity isn't a religion to be practiced.  Christianity isn't about doing the right things and avoiding the wrong.  Christianity isn't about seeking perfection by going to church or singing in a choir,  Christianity isn't what you do, it's who you are.

I believe that humans are broken from the start.  No one teaches little ones to bite you out of spite or say they hate you. It's wired in to us to be contrary and often downright hurtful.  The world is full of brokenness, including war and cancer and bullying.  This brokenness is the result of sin.  But sin isn't breaking a law or rule.  Those things are also the results of the brokenness.  Sin, as defined in the Bible, is missing the mark.  Whose mark?  God's, his standard.  And try as we can, we cannot hit the mark on our own, we are too broken.  So God sent his Son to hit the mark for us, in our place.  As a result, the issue isn't what I do or don't do (which rules I keep or break), the issue is what I do about Jesus. Do I accept his gift or reject it?  My sins were forgiven way back on the cross.  My sins are not forgiven by my doing good things.  Nor is my salvation threatened by doing wrong things. It's all about what God did for us.

There is great freedom in that. Certainly not the freedom to go out and become a serial killer or even a lousy boss.  There is an expectation of a different type of lifestyle, but that lifestyle (or lack thereof) does not make one a Christian.  A Christian is someone who follows Christ, and that following begins when someone accepts God's work on a cross some 2000 years ago. And therein lies that faith thing.

A lot to take in.  But believe it or not, I want you to know that the idea of earning salvation by a series of Brownie points is not Christianity, at least not what the Bible teaches about Christianity.  I'll give you that it's how many Christians live, but unfortunately it's because they don't really understand what they've gotten themselves in to. The freedom and grace Christianity actually offers is scary stuff too.  Rules and tradition are much more comfortable.  That gets in the way of Christians as well.

But you do have to agree that a God who would do this for us, as a gift free for the asking, isn't the ogre God often presented in discussing deity. God is a God of grace and free choice.  Why doesn't he just make us all Christians?  Because he wants us to choose.  Coerced love is never really love.  So he did all the work and left it up to us to accept or reject.  Whether we believe or not, God is in the room and he'd love to get to know you.

Enough for now.  I intend to post more ramblings now and then and look forward to any comments you might send a long my way.  I'd love to answer questions and respond to your thoughts on the ideas I present.