Forty years

Forty years ago today, I took a splash of faith.

After reading the Bible and studying with two women, I was baptized at the University Church of Christ on November 11, 1981.  I was 18.

I grew up religious. I attended the Baptist church with my family. Around the age of eight, I went forward and "prayed the prayer" with a very nice older woman who'd asked me, "Did you come to be saved?" 

We had all stood up and "gone forward" that particular day. I vaguely remember an older gentleman coming to the house and talking with us; my grandmother also told me much later that "your mother asked, do you understand what this means? And you said, yes."

I think my parents went forward because they wanted to place membership at that particular church. 

The next week, my sister and I were both baptized. I told the preacher my name and he said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

I started reading the Bible daily after a Pioneer Girls leader challenged me to read a verse every night. I thought, "I can do better than that, I can read a chapter every night!"

I prayed daily, read the Bible daily, tried to live a Christian life. 

So why get involved with a Church of Christ? Why get baptized again?

Well, for one thing, if I understand Acts 2:38 correctly, we're to be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. I was not. 

Number two, if this was what God said, then yes, I wanted to do what God said.

Finally, and honestly . . . I was afraid of going to hell.

So I did it.

I didn't know at that time that the church I'd been baptized into was considered a cult. Or, at the very least, controversial. 

The church I was part of was also part of a network of churches loosely associated with the Crossroads Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida. They had a school of preaching and sent out preachers to other churches.  Crossroads had had great success with reaching their community, particularly college students. They used a variety of methods such as small group Bible studies and prayer partners, or discipleship partners. They encouraged people to turn away from their sins and to lead a life pleasing to God. They encouraged people to study their Bibles daily, pray daily, have close relationships with other Christians, confess their sins to other Christians, and share their faith with non-Christians.

None of those things are bad in and of themselves.

What happened at Crossroads and at other Crossroads-related churches was that these very good things became a method of control. The "prayer partner" relationship, instead of the one-on-one discipling method it was supposed to be, became a one-over-one relationship, with, "I'm the older Christian, so you need to do what I tell you," It also became a session where you were asked, "What are you studying in your quiet time (a period of daily prayer and Bible study)?" "What sins have you committed that you need to confess?" "How many people have you shared your faith with?" If you weren't having a "quiet time", why weren't you? If you weren't sharing your faith, why not? If you weren't having visitors at our weekly Bible studies (designed to attract non-Christians), why weren't you?

That term, "sharing your faith," really meant "inviting people to church, including total strangers." The more people you invited to church, and the more visitors you had at events, the more spiritual you were considered. And if those people you studied with were baptized into Christ, they were considered your "fruit" and you were considered to have "borne fruit". And the more people you lead to Christ, the more spiritual you are considered.

I have heard of at least one person who made it their goal to "share their faith" with every person they made eye contact with. Another person vowed to fast until they shared their faith . . . and fasted for eight days.

Groups of Christians that met together weekly as "discipleship groups" became meetings where you were asked "how many people have you invited to church this week? How many people are you studying the Bible with? If not, why not?" 

I learned much good during my years in Tallahassee, I learned ways to actually study the Bible, not just read it. I learned the value of Christian relationships. I learned that it was okay to pray and tell God how you felt, not just, "Dear God, thank you for this day, please be with everyone, in Jesus' name I pray, Amen."  I enjoyed going out on dates and getting to know other guys. 

But after five years in Tallahassee, I was exhausted and burned out, spiritually. The things that were meant to be good were vicious and controlling. Leaders became controlling and angry when they felt that you were not measuring up. After the last group Bible study I attended before I graduated from college ended, I felt a vast sense of relief that I would never have to worry about inviting someone to Bible study ever again. 

This is not the way to live a Christian life, riddled with guilt that you hadn't "done enough" and riddled with fear that someone would rebuke you -- sometimes very harshly -- for not inviting enough people to church events, or for not having a daily "quiet time", or basically, for not living the way they thought you should live. I had a prayer partner one time who walked into my dorm room, had a conversation with me and my roommate, and then at the end asked us, "Have you thought about rearranging your room?" I got rather ticked off and told her that we'd arranged the room the way it was because we only had two electrical outlets and were trying to get our stuff in a place so we could plug in what we needed to plug in. 

I deliberately moved to another church that had been part of the Crossroads movement. The church I moved to, I'd heard they taught grace, and I badly needed it. Right at the time I got there, in 1987, the Crossroads movement morphed into the Boston Movement. Chuck Lucas, the preacher at Crossroads, was fired for "recurring sins" in his life. One of his proteges, Kip McKean, was then preaching at the Boston Church of Christ.  Kip is bold and charismatic in his preaching, and he took over as the de facto leader of the Crossroads movement. He and the leaders under him began visiting churches, "encouraging" (i.e. practically ordering) the pastor to move to Boston for additional training, and then sending a replacement preacher in. At least two churches I'm aware of, one in Atlanta, the other in Tampa, split as a result of the actions by people from Boston.

My church, in Miami, refused to be taken over . . . so people from Boston planted a new church in Miami. At the same time, my church was having serious financial problems. So, in 1989, the solution the leaders came up with was to start meeting in independent house churches. It was sold to us mostly as "this is the way the early church met". There were those who decided not to go that route and went to other churches. I went the route of the house churches. 

The idea of an independent house church looks good on paper: having a small group of believers meeting weekly and sharing what they've learned, praying together, helping those who are struggling, etc. I think there's a lot we can learn from a house church movement. But we did house churches as a direct result of the abuse we'd experienced at the hands of Crossroads/Boston, and I think that was a mistake. We were so desperate to get away from what we called legalism that we went 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 

By 1993, I was engaged to be married, and my father was ill with ALS. He would die four weeks before my wedding. 

Right before we got married, I told my now-husband, "The house churches are not working. We need to get out."

It took a year, but we eventually did get out. I took a job in Atlanta, and my husband and I moved and went back to a traditional church setting. We've been there since 1994, and while the place has had its ups and downs and turnarounds, I know that churches are not perfect and I believe the place we're at is doing the best it can. I believe our leaders love God, and they do not try to preach a "formula" for a perfect Christian life. 

Where am I, after 40 years? 

I call myself an imperfect follower of a perfect God. If someone asks, are you a Christian, I will gladly answer, "Yes." I struggle at times with believing God loves me. I wonder about what is literally true in the Bible and what is allegorical. I get very frustrated with "Scripture wars"; such as, "Acts 2:38 says you have to be baptized in order to be saved," "Oh, yeah! Well, I'll see your Acts 2:38 and raise you an Ephesians 2:8, where it says you're saved by grace!" And I can name more and more. 

And yet . . . if God exists, if Jesus of Nazareth was God in the flesh, who is the perfect, sinless sacrifice for us, if he did rise from the dead and go back to heaven, and if the Bible is true . . . that Bible says that God is love, and that God so loved the world. That means me. 

I don't understand a lot about God. I don't understand why evil and pain exist, especially when innocents are the victims of that evil and pain. I don't understand certain parts of the Bible where God commanded the complete destruction of a people, including men, women, and children. I don't understand why some prayers get answered "yes" and why some prayers get answered "no". 

There are also the questions I've seen people ask, such as, "Was the world created in six literal, 24-hour days?" "Can women lead/preach, etc. to both men and women?" "Is homosexuality a sin?" "Is there a  hell with a literal lake of fire? Does everyone get to go to heaven? Or are non-believers just 'annihilated'?" "Does someone have to be immersed in water in order to be saved? What about those who don't believe that, or who believe that immersion is 'an outward sign of an inward grace'?"

To be honest, the questions exhaust me. The extra-Biblical expectations placed on people also exhaust me, especially the expectations placed on women:  be a perfect "keeper of the home", which means household tips, how to please your husband, how to raise your kids "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (preferably by homeschooling them). 

But, when I strip it all down to what I understand the "basics" of Christianity to be, it comes out to: God loved us first. God created us in His image. God wants a relationship with us. He sent Jesus (God incarnate) to give himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. (I have heard Jesus' death on the cross interpreted as, "You're so awful you made God kill himself." That ignores Jesus' statement in the book of John, where Jesus himself said, no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord.")
But Jesus didn't just die for our sins. He came back to life -- the ultimate triumph over death. He went back to heaven and we're still waiting for him to come back to gather His people. 

If I accept that I'm a sinner (which I am) and I believe that Jesus came to forgive my sins (which he did), and I repent -- turn away -- from my sins, and -- I believe -- if I participate in the act of baptism upon confessing that I believe Jesus is Lord, and I want him to be in charge of my life and live how he wants me to live, then I am saved. I can call myself "child of God", "Christian," "disciple," etc.  And God will not leave me to wander in the wilderness. He gave me three things to help me: 1. The Bible, 2. the Holy Spirit, 3. Other Christians. He does expect me to turn away from my sins, but when I sin, God promises that if I confess my sins, he will forgive them. 

I do struggle with the fear of hell. Whatever hell is, I do not want to be there. More and more, though, I want to serve God because I love him back. Not because I'm afraid of what he'll do to me if I don't obey him.  He loved me first, I want to love him back. 

There are answers to questions I don't have. The longer I live, the less certainty I have. 

But after forty years? 

Even with the struggles, even with unanswered questions, even when I go "Huh?" when I hear/read certain things . . . I keep coming back to, there is a God, he is wiser than I and he knows best . . . and he loves me. He can take my pain and anger because he is bigger than my pain and anger. I don't know "why (fill in the blank)", but he does, and if he is a God of love -- which I believe he is -- I can trust him with the pain, doubt, unanswered questions, etc. that I have. 

It's been forty years of pain, struggle, sometimes triumph, questions unanswered, faith challenged.

I still choose to believe.

I still choose to put myself into the hands of a loving God. 

I look forward to more years with him.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.