My Confession
I figured out God a long time ago.
I don’t know exactly when it happened. I know I attended church some 300 times while I was still suspended in amniotic fluid.
Maybe it was when I was 4 at my home in Dyersburg, Tennessee doing my best imitation of a Southern preacher. At the conclusion of every message – on hell, mind you – my sister accepted Christ, whether she was willing or not. And none of the family could leave the living room until they shook my hand telling me what a great job I’d done.
Maybe it was immediately following my baptism. I walked with great difficulty to the back dressing room to shed my waterlogged 20 lb pair of Toughskin jeans. I was a walking wet floor hazard, and, to demonstrate, I slipped and landed on the back of my head a trinity of times.
I’m not sure when I figured God out, but I did.
I can’t take all the credit for it. In 3rd grade, I left that evil, corrupting influence of the world – public schools – for the safe, pristine, virgin world of Christian school. Chapel services, creation-based science, and Scripture memorization helped me become a God-know-it-all.
Something happened though.
Somewhere between puberty, seeing the moral failures of Christian leaders who were close to me, having my life run by legalistic, judgmental church people, and failing at my own attempts to earn salvation by grace through faith, I decided I just couldn’t do this anymore.
By the time I was 19 years old, I effectively walked away from church. I wasn’t done with God so to speak; I was just tired of being such a failure. I’d never please Him. I was tired of faking it. Even though victorious has been a way some people have described Christians, I spent most of my life feeling defeated. I honestly wasn’t that different than people who didn’t believe in Jesus. I wasn’t that changed internally. I was racked with guilt. I tried so hard, did good for a while, then the wheels would fall off again.
I was supposed to be different! Was I ever really changed? I seemed to have signed up for an endless to-do list from going to church, reading my Bible, to evangelism, and I couldn’t even manage my sin long enough to hardly think about that stuff. And even when I did, you know, I just really didn’t feel like doing it.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. In fact, I see that most of this emerging generation of Christians have done the same as I did. At the risk of failing or faking, they have walked away from church altogether. 80% of the kids who grew up in church are done with it by the time they take their first ACT test.
We all have our stories. It doesn’t matter if you grew up Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Presbyterian, etc., all of us – even those who never technically walked way from church, even those who had a healthy relationship with church – have carried on our lives with a dysfunctional relationship with God.
Just so we’re clear: I’m not church or denomination bashing. Let’s settle that right now. Beautiful, well-intentioned, God-fearing Christians spoke what they believed was God’s Word to me to help me grow, mature, and to keep me from having sex before I got married. I thank them.
But I confess that I effectively walked away from it all because, though I knew every Scripture about Him, was well versed in theology, won Bible drills (if you don’t know what they are, you’re better off!), and had all the traditional markings of a healthy Christian, I was dying inside.
I thought I knew God. I figured Him out a long time ago. But I was wrong. I was so wrong. And my incomplete, inaccurate picture of Him kept me from the fullest life of gratitude, grace, joy, triumph, love, compassion, passion, humility, fun, community, friendship, meaning, breathing, smiling, giving, just to name a few.
Regardless of where you are living right now, God has given me a passion and a burden for you.
Struggling, defeated, ready to give up?
Hurt, bitter, angry because of what church did to you?
Pretty sure you’ve already made your mind up about what Jesus is all about?
Trying to figure out why you’ve got your life together and no one else does? Okay, that was sarcastic.
Let’s chat awhile.
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