I have a story to tell. To be honest, though, I'm not sure how to tell it, or if I even want to. There's a lot of fear that goes into honesty. When Pastor Mike approached me and asked me about writing regularly about my experience of the Saturday night service, I knew it was something I need to do and something I believe I am called to do. But, to be entirely transparent, I was also terrified. Not necessarily because I have any qualms with being honest, but because I was afraid that being entirely honest in this place would be impossible.
You may be entirely confused by that statement. But, to understand what I just said, you have to know some things about me. And so, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm going to step back in time a few (or five) years.
I have been a Christian for as long as I remember (I vaguely remember praying "the prayer" at two years old). I was raised in an amazing family and an amazing church that gave me an insanely solid biblical training. High school Sunday School class was a four year course in theology and biblical studies. I spent three summers in high school and college as a counselor at a Bible camp. I thought my faith was pretty sound.
Then college happened. I attended a Christian liberal arts college in rural Iowa. Sophomore year things started falling apart. The last summer I worked at that summer camp was the summer before my sophomore year, and I remember being able to sense a shift even then. I couldn't feel God anymore. He had gone missing. College classes only intensified things. I started being exposed to questions I'd never asked and to potential answers to those questions I had never before been allowed to consider. Things fell apart. Not only was I going through a spiritual desert emotionally speaking, but I now had a whole set of academic concerns when it came to God's very existence.
I remember sophomore and junior year of college as among the darkest of my life spiritually speaking. Although it was up and down, it was mostly down. God brought me through, though, with my faith intact. I attribute that entirely to His goodness and faithfulness. My faith was (and is) weak, but my God is strong.
Here's the thing, though. In moving away from home to attend graduate school, I changed. Graduate school taught me a certain way of thinking. It created a monster in some ways. I learned to live with constant doubt, learned to embrace cynicism. And I learned, too, to bury my questions and doubts when around other Christians, because I was afraid of being condemned as a "liberal," which I was.
Then graduate school ended, and I moved to Georgia. Georgia changed me, there can be no doubt about that. I found a few people here who understood me. I found a group of friends with whom I could grow as a follower of Christ. I had time to devote to reading and thinking about topics beyond the degree to which Hitler considered himself and his movement "Christian" (the topic of my master's thesis). Some of my cynicism began to wash away. And yet, at the same time, I found peace with many of my questions. I began to (maybe for the first time) value the intellectual/spiritual journey on which God has sent me.
I do, however, struggle a lot with how we should read the Bible. Is it a historical document? Is it "alive" today? Is it both? If so, how do we responsibly balance the two? I am uncomfortable with quoting isolated Bible verses without giving context to that quote, because I think it robs the verse of its textual and historical context. Any time someone quotes a verse now, I find myself madly skimming the entire context as much as possible before I decide whether or not to agree with their statement. That doesn't even get into how the original audience would have understood that statement, though. I could go on forever, but I won't. My cynicism and questions aren't really the point of this.
Tonight, when I sat down for the sermon, and Pastor Mike announced he'd be preaching about eternal security (the idea that once we accept Christ, God will not abandon us), I fought the urge to tune out the whole thing. It's not that I doubt my salvation. I don't. It's that I have about sixty billion other questions, mostly unrelated, and the topic of "eternal security" is simply not on my radar. Despite my cynicism, I decided to not tune out the whole thing.
And am I ever glad I listened.
There was something, I dunno, therapeutic or something about studying a topic like assurance of salvation. Although I have a healthy amount of cynicism regarding the topic theologically, and came into tonight ill-prepared to make any sort of argument for the idea that people can never walk away from true faith, tonight I was reminded of the importance of forming opinions based off of the Bible rather than my experience. Pastor Mike took us through a number of Scriptures that he believes show ample Biblical support for eternal security. Then he went through a number of objections that people have to the idea that salvation cannot be lost and answered those objections.
And he said something at the end, something that resonated deeply with me, something about how our experiences should never be more important than the Scriptures. I think, if anything, that's what I needed to hear. Sure, I may have a mountain of questions still to wade through in terms of how the Bible should be read and exactly how we should interpret it, balancing its status as a historical document and as the inspired Word of God. But for tonight, God reminded me of the simple power of His words.
And that's enough.
God's Word is enough.
Here's the thing, though. In moving away from home to attend graduate school, I changed. Graduate school taught me a certain way of thinking. It created a monster in some ways. I learned to live with constant doubt, learned to embrace cynicism. And I learned, too, to bury my questions and doubts when around other Christians, because I was afraid of being condemned as a "liberal," which I was.
Then graduate school ended, and I moved to Georgia. Georgia changed me, there can be no doubt about that. I found a few people here who understood me. I found a group of friends with whom I could grow as a follower of Christ. I had time to devote to reading and thinking about topics beyond the degree to which Hitler considered himself and his movement "Christian" (the topic of my master's thesis). Some of my cynicism began to wash away. And yet, at the same time, I found peace with many of my questions. I began to (maybe for the first time) value the intellectual/spiritual journey on which God has sent me.
I do, however, struggle a lot with how we should read the Bible. Is it a historical document? Is it "alive" today? Is it both? If so, how do we responsibly balance the two? I am uncomfortable with quoting isolated Bible verses without giving context to that quote, because I think it robs the verse of its textual and historical context. Any time someone quotes a verse now, I find myself madly skimming the entire context as much as possible before I decide whether or not to agree with their statement. That doesn't even get into how the original audience would have understood that statement, though. I could go on forever, but I won't. My cynicism and questions aren't really the point of this.
Tonight, when I sat down for the sermon, and Pastor Mike announced he'd be preaching about eternal security (the idea that once we accept Christ, God will not abandon us), I fought the urge to tune out the whole thing. It's not that I doubt my salvation. I don't. It's that I have about sixty billion other questions, mostly unrelated, and the topic of "eternal security" is simply not on my radar. Despite my cynicism, I decided to not tune out the whole thing.
And am I ever glad I listened.
There was something, I dunno, therapeutic or something about studying a topic like assurance of salvation. Although I have a healthy amount of cynicism regarding the topic theologically, and came into tonight ill-prepared to make any sort of argument for the idea that people can never walk away from true faith, tonight I was reminded of the importance of forming opinions based off of the Bible rather than my experience. Pastor Mike took us through a number of Scriptures that he believes show ample Biblical support for eternal security. Then he went through a number of objections that people have to the idea that salvation cannot be lost and answered those objections.
And he said something at the end, something that resonated deeply with me, something about how our experiences should never be more important than the Scriptures. I think, if anything, that's what I needed to hear. Sure, I may have a mountain of questions still to wade through in terms of how the Bible should be read and exactly how we should interpret it, balancing its status as a historical document and as the inspired Word of God. But for tonight, God reminded me of the simple power of His words.
And that's enough.
God's Word is enough.
