An Imperfect Christian
But then aren’t we all
Sharing here a few biographical bits about my journey through Christianity over the years. Although I’ve read a few pages here and there I’m hardly a biblical scholar, and a few of my brushes with religion have been admittedly awkward. However I like to think that all of the sermons (or at least the ones I didn’t sleep through) have had some benefit over the years, and even if my life isn’t exactly where I had pictured it would be a decade ago, I like to think I have religion to thank for a lot of what has kept me sane. This post may be a little personal and a deviation from some of my earlier themes, but then what could possibly be more personal than a man’s relationship with his maker.
I was raised Catholic which meant primarily two things: weekly Sunday services and Tuesday CCD (basically a classroom environment with similar aged students to prepare one for all of the sacraments up to Confirmation). As any Catholic can tell you, the exaggerated repetition of Catholic services over the years is more than enough to drive home certain inescapable feelings of awe, after all the church that was founded 2,000 years ago has had all of that time to perfect those institutions which inspire their flock. The stained glass and stations of the cross, the altar and pews, the kneeling and crossing, the holy water and eucharist, the ancient hymns and accompanying organ tones, the gospels and homilies, and of course the congregation and priests. (In our case almost exclusively Irish priests with heavy accents). The experience of a Catholic service may feel a little foreign to the uninitiated, but it is the timelessness of its practices and traditions that allow to it transcend skepticism, and even those who consider themselves non-believers may be surprised to find a peace and calm in attendance — if not initially than at least over time. In my youth the subtleties of a the readings and sermon were often lost on me, however I found certain inspiration from my Picture Bible, an 800 page comic book retelling of both testaments that I read and reread so many times that the first one fell apart and had to be replaced. When my early teachers and relatives would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up I would always answer quite sincerely “a prophet.” (eventually traded in that dream to study engineering)
Unfortunately my faith didn’t withstand it’s first big test, leaving home for university. It is one of my biggest regrets of college that I didn’t find a church home at UF. (Another was that I didn’t join the band.) As anyone who has spent time in a state university can tell you, partying can become its own kind of religion, after all it’s no secret that Gainesville is a drinking town with a football problem. The local watering holes and their sticky floors, the bouncers and bartenders, the red solo cups and lines at the keg, the pre-parties and football tailgates, the local bands and third rate touring acts, and of course the underage kids and their fake id’s. (In my case the id was literally a “Kid’s Club ID Card” that had been a free grocery store promotion, with a birth date that said I was six years older.) The college party atmosphere may have lacked some of the refinement of traditional religion, but it made up for that in its own kind of traditions. There was a dependableness in the beer, and even though it’s effect was inevitably a stupefication and loss of subtleness, sometimes regrettable lowered inhibitions, and on a few occasion even hours lost from memory, in at least the first few drinks there was always a lucid high which made for easy laughs and fun conversation. It took me all of college to figure out that this initial buzz was not one that could be extended by binge drinking, which would only hasten the stupefication effects, and a couple more years after that to figure out that occasional post graduation attempts to recapture college age shenanigans were a bad idea (eventually trading in the shenanigans for a general two drink limit on rare occasions of imbibing).
Having given up my second religion, it would take some time before I found my way back to any at all. Modernity has a way of filling vacuums, and the distractions of our lives make for an effective fog obscuring the call of faith. Sometimes it takes period of darkness to reveal a light, and sometimes wading through periods of despair to find calm. To me it was quite a storm that led me back to God, and the realization that this was missing was one of the few redeeming points of a challenging time.
Finding one’s faith and finding a church home are not the same thing, and despite a somewhat unorthodox tour through several orthodoxies, the feeling of belonging was always missing. Perhaps it was the scandals that kept me from returning to my childhood religion, perhaps it was a feeling of having outgrown, or perhaps it was just a need for a culture I could better relate to, but in the end I ended up without a church home altogether. It was finally a special girl that brought me back into the positive influence of a Sunday routine, and for this I will always be grateful.
To find a church is to find not just a place of worship, but a fellowship — the breaking of the bread, the readings, the prayers, and the inspiration. I discovered that the orthodoxy of a church has less importance than the simple act of worship, and that a non-denominational approach allowed one to focus on teachings of the Bible instead of the distractions of church governance and doctrine. For a time this church became a home, and it was a great experience. To every season there is a turn, and as some friendships started to fade, so did a relationship. Marriage preparation classes were traded in for moving boxes. It was a disappointing outcome, but perhaps for the best. It is another regret that I did not try harder to maintain a fellowship circle. Perhaps it was memories of her, or perhaps the shock, fallout, and grief of a church leadership scandal turned tragedy, but eventually I turned away.
The beautiful thing about families is always having people to fall back on. In this world of superficial connections and artificial interactions, one may be fooled into a feeling of camaraderie when you are actually a one man band. A church can either be a second family, or it can become no different than watching a recorded lecture behind a screen, it is up to you what you make of it. We live in an age of skepticism, where the noise of the day subverts our sense of normalcy. One of the great strengths of Christian worship is its centering of morals and values, of what kind of life we can live and how we should treat each other in all parts of our life. The fact that Christianity has not only survived but thrived over two millennia tells me that we are doing something right, that this religion has tapped into some timeless truths that make a life better lived, or at least more bearable. But for the true benefit of those truths it is not enough to just look to the gospels for inspiration, it requires both belief and faith to find the joy and strength that are there waiting. Jesus wasn’t out to persecute sinners or to judge, he was here as a savior, and gave the ultimate sacrifice to serve as our redeemer. I refuse to believe that one has to choose between God and science, the ultimate false dichotomy. The Bible is the word of God but it was written by the hand of man, using the vocabulary of those men around at the time it was written. Physics is the voice of God in his own tongue. And a church isn’t simply some building with an altar and pews. The congregation is the real church. They could be housed in an ancient cathedral, an abandoned movie theater, a hollowed out ice skating rink, or even some generous person’s living room, it makes no difference. Where people gather to worship together is all that matters.
*For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
Books that were referenced here or otherwise inspired this post:
The Picture Bible — Iva Hoth and Andre Le Blanc
The Daily Bible
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For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.
