Faith Journey

“It was on a Monday somebody touched me …”

On a Sunday night sometime within my tenth or eleventh year, in a celebratory, hymn sing-a-long service at a small Baptist church in Buda, Texas, where I attended with my parents for the majority of my youth, I summoned enough courage to profess a faith I was not even sure I possessed. This was quite a change in activity for a boy who usually passed most of the time in the traditional services with a tired head reclining on his mother’s shoulder and the slightest of snores in his nose. The music minister led the congregation in “Somebody Touched Me,” a chorus that, to me, always seemed to depict Almighty God as no more affectionate than a golf buddy encouragingly patting his friend on the back. Still, to stand up during this song was to announce the day in which one accepted Christ as Savior, and to me rising from the pew felt the equivalent of Peter stepping out onto the tumultuous waves. As the simple chorus repeatedly bounced about the little sanctuary, and as members of the congregation stood to declare which day of the week it was they had prayed for Jesus Christ to save them, I prepared myself to respond, despite the childishly narcissistic fear that all eyes would immediately focus on me when I did indeed rise. The chorus rolled on, “It was on a Thursday somebody touched me … It was on a Friday somebody touched me …” and the members continued to stand, some clapping, most beaming, and all appearing to me both confident and pure of heart. No such assurance could I feel inhabiting me. But as the final day of the song was sounded, with knocking knees and trembling legs I pulled myself up from where I sat and contorted my face into the most satisfied and joyous grin I could fake. “It was on a Sunday somebody touched me …” Looking over my shoulder, I caught the eye of my mother, who had recently sat back down after her day’s verse ended. I’m not sure if she stared back in surprised happiness or startled confusion, but in that moment I realized that this decision I had made was not meant only for me personally; instead, it affirmed a connection to all these other people, whether I knew them or not. It would be a long while before I found myself comfortable with that radically communal reality.

Mine was not the most convincing of new births. Around three years earlier, it was another Sunday night service at First Baptist of Buda – a choir concert followed by a simple Gospel presentation – that carried me to the brink of the decision to pray for salvation as I then understood it. Months earlier, my only sibling, Katy, had died suddenly in a freak accident during a Christmas caroling hayride with the church youth group. My parents were still coping with the initial devastation of her loss, but as I was still a child, I no longer suffered the shock of separation. In its place I was experiencing a morbid fixation on the inevitability of death. This concern kept my ears piqued during any time the church pastor would mention heaven or salvation. That particular night, following the concert, he spoke of the grave importance of making a “decision” for Christ so that we might one day be with him in Heaven rather than separated from him “and those we love” in Hell. Later that evening, I lay huddled beneath my covers, a nervous eight year old normally frightened of whatever shadowy terror my imagination could conjure. Only this night, what struck the greatest level of fear within me was the thought of Hell – that dank, cavernous wasteland where red-eyed, razor-toothed demons prowled on orders from their dark master. I was terrified of ending up in such a place and, even at such an early age, I was weary of dreading death and of fearing that my end could come without warning, as had Katy’s. Praying to Jesus to save me meant I could avoid a hellish destination at my imminent death (which is a plausible possibility to a child afraid of the dark); there was no debate. Under the covers, I mumbled to Jesus that I was a sinner and I needed him to take my sins away. The early formation of my theology was thus concerned with little more than a “Get Out of Hell Free” card; I became a Christian to avoid Hell and gain Heaven.

In those transitional years from childhood to adolescence, Christianity and the Church always went hand in hand, by default. I never considered their separation, mainly because one did not make sense without the other. This is perhaps the one theological ideal that has remained constant throughout my life. However, the thrust of Christianity to me as a young teenager all boiled down to the matter of moral obedience. Am I obeying my parents? Am I respecting my teachers? Am I treating my friends hospitably? Am I a “good” person? Therefore, church was not a center for worship or, as it has been famously described, “a hospital for sinners,” but a command post for the enforcement of morals. When I thought of myself as a Christian, the roots of such an understanding were shallow, concerned only with the cosmetic. Nowhere was this thin belief inculcated more than at church. There, in that quaint, small-town gathering, I grew up within a community of people who considered themselves genuinely loving to one another, but, in actuality, were concerned chiefly with keeping up appearances and offering allegiance to conventional moral standards. This small-minded faith became not only the plumb line for determining whether or not I was being “good,” but if I was worthy of God’s love. Though it was preached with good intentions, the message of the church was a gospel of moralism. The salvation that I sought years before under the covers became akin to a loan that must be paid back by daily deposits of moral obedience. And I did my best. We all did our best.

If life is a road, then eventually my journey down it wound away from First Baptist of Buda. It was a forced change of direction, for the church split. At age sixteen, I did not seek, nor did I care, to know the real reason for the ailment that cast out my pastor and youth minister. I was content merely to complain about the injustice of it all. Years later, I found out it was a parishioner’s entrepreneurial business deal, in which he sought investors from within the church, that divided the congregation, and those I followed out of First Baptist, the pastor, youth minister, and a small group of parents, were the ones mistakenly mixed up in the sour boondoggle. Nevertheless, my parents, who had become less than satisfied with the church and, having been duped, lost money in the investment, decided to move their membership to another Baptist church across town, and it was there I finished my last year as a “youth.” On one of the first Sundays I began attending this new church, the youth minister resigned and left within the week. To this day I do not know the reason. This rapid succession of change – these potholes in my life road – wrapped me in uneasiness. I was certain of nothing. Just as, at age eight, I lost all confidence in the certainty of a long life, so did my cozy home environment crumble as I began college at Southwest Texas State University.

The only thing left to fall would be self-confidence, both spiritually and physically, and the wrecking ball would come midway through my first year of college, from a Bible study in which Hebrews 11:1 was expounded. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I was taught that the word “hope” denoted certainty rather than unsure expectation. It was tight-fisted assurance rather than a wringing of the hands. Therefore, the verse could be read, “Now faith is being certain of what we are certain for and certain of what we do not see.” I was taught that this was the essence of being a Christian – to know you were saved and to completely rest in that fact. And because nothing in my life was certain – especially my own salvation, which I agonized over silently year after year, my constant sins of dishonesty, laziness, and adolescent lust jack-hammering my mind with doubt – I feared I did not possess true faith. In those years, full of confused prayers and dozens of “rededications,” I continually recalled a heavy-as-brick statement by Rick, a speaker at one of the youth camps I had once attended. With dark, certain eyes and an intensely fixating glare, Rick had looked us all over and said concerning salvation, “If you’re 95% sure you’re saved, you are 100% wrong!” This quote would ring in my mind for years, the catalyst for countless walks of desperation down sanctuary aisles.

Hebrews 11:1, if it commanded me to be certain, was a verse to which I knew I could never live up. In high school a pattern of “rededicating my life to the Lord” had begun, taking place at almost every event I attended; I believed salvation was all about my individual decision, and I had prayed for salvation enough times to save a small country. This cycle only grew more intense in college. After all, I imagined I was so young that night years before under the covers that I most likely did not get the prayer right. I hadn’t fully understood the weight of sin or the weight of glory at that age, so obviously that cry to Jesus was of dubious validity. There was no joy in my journey of faith. Was I even traveling the right road? As each year passed, I would come face to face again with the euangelion, and each year the need for salvation would gain more weight, become much direr a situation. So, kneeling again, I would grapple for grace, beg for eternal safety.

My struggle centered not only on spiritual uncertainty. My daily behavior while in college was shaped by a pervading sense that I was not – could not be – anyone of importance. With my friends I would welcome, sometimes even instigate, humorous but degrading jabs directed at me, mainly because I did not feel worthy of nobler words. In the occasional relationship with a girl, time and again she would mention my lack of confidence, how disconcerting it was to her that I saw myself able to influence no one. The few periods in which I took on a leadership role within a campus ministry or church group, I was plagued internally by constant doubts that I was doing any real, lasting good. I believed that once I stopped sinning and perfected a daily practice of reading the Bible, praying, and, as a result, experiencing daily revelation from God, then I would feel the love of Christ that so many other Christians gushed about. God would not be silent to someone who was truly faithful, truly saved.

One of the first moments of illumination through the dusty murk of this crisis came halfway through my time in college. While working a part-time job at a Christian bookstore, on a whim I picked up a book entitled The Ragamuffin Gospel, a work by Brennan Manning, a former Catholic priest. The odd title inspired me to turn its pages. I credit this book as one of the most influential works I have read in my life up to this present time. Manning not only communicated the unconditional, endless nature of God’s love, but how his grace, impossible to earn, should revolutionize our entire life, not just prompt our moral obedience. God was not only to be recognized as Lord over my spiritual activities, but every aspect of my life, from the mundane to the magnificent. In words that have stayed with me since first reading the book, Manning expounds on Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s famous prayer:

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Delight me to see how your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

My spiritual wounds found a salve in these words, and I began to try taking delight in a life of religious simplicity. God was no longer furrowing his eyebrows as he studied my every good and bad act, but was joyfully supplying my life and breath. Most importantly, my self-centered view of God began to fade, though slowly. He grew larger than merely an immanent god – he became transcendent. He was the God of the Universe. The God of mighty deeds, yet still desiring relationship with those he created.

However, with this shift in theology came a new struggle. As I learned to embrace the grace of God – that he loves me as I am and not as I should be – I found it hard to reconcile God’s justice and forgiveness, especially concerning how, as a forgiven Christian, I was to avoid taking advantage of the grace given to me. My Christology was central; the death and resurrection of Jesus was the source of the salvation I claimed. But having prayed to God for ultimate forgiveness and having accepted this salvation, I felt as if I were treating God like a weak friend who cannot help but continually forgive his fair-weather pals no matter how many times they reject his friendship. My lack of confidence metamorphosed into a burden of guilt, heavy as a millstone, bending my entire body into weariness. Day after day, I recognized a desperate need for God’s grace mainly because I believed I was treating it as a license to lie, or to explode in anger, or to indulge in lust, or to put off praying. Surely, if I truly understood the gift of grace, I would not need it to the extent that I did. And so, as in my days as a teenager, I doubted my salvation. Surely a real Christian in my situation would have come to an understanding about how to live both obediently and effectively, growing beyond a need for so much grace. This road of life was as spastically up and down as an EKG, where from each mountaintop experience of grace I would plummet into valleys of guilt.

It was not until after I graduated from college and began serving as a missionary in New England that I reclaimed a measure of equilibrium. It was during a cold winter in Northborough, Massachusetts when I experienced the most poignant of subtle revelations (for there has never been an audible voice from Heaven as I once desperately desired, but

only the subtle nudges of the God who does not adhere to our daily planners and formulaic self-help schedules). Still I feared I was years away from figuring out the structure of my life, from being pure and confident like those members of my childhood church standing up and singing with certainty. How could I preach salvation if I was not even confident of my own? I was conflicted about the wisdom of the mobilization board sending me out. I certainly did not feel like a capable missionary, and I wondered if my sponsors suspected this self-doubt. However, it was only while accepting the task to serve in student ministry programs that I finally found release from the tensions of my youth.

The answer to this agonizing question – the profound discovery of truth – settled before my eyes in the gentlest of ways. While clicking across the Internet one afternoon, bored and carrying around the normal, back-of-my-mind despondency, I came across a webpage that contained all the concert transcripts by one of my favorite musicians, the late Rich Mullins, a songwriter also hailed as a poet and an oblate missionary. I began lazily reading through some of the stories and statements from his concerts, knowing that Mullins was notorious for being controversially honest, no matter the fallout. Then I read an anecdote Mullins told at one of his last concerts, a few weeks before his death, about the time a producer from a Christian cable television station called to investigate him because her show was considering inviting him as a guest. The woman proceeded to question him about when he “accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.” Mullins replied that he was around three years of age, and the woman incredulously asked how this could have taken place. “Well, I was in Sunday School and we prayed, ‘Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus,’” Mullins sang. The woman told him that wasn’t what she meant, and asked him to clarify when he “knowingly” accepted Christ. When he told her he was probably a third grader at the time, she once again questioned him in disbelief, arguing that he couldn’t have possibly known then what he was praying. It was Mullin’s answer that shook the very foundations of the prison I had fashioned around myself. He told the producer, “Lady, we never understand what we’re praying, and God, in his mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to his wisdom.”

Over the next few months, my moralistic and decisionistic view of God and salvation began to melt away from me like an ice sculpture set out beneath the blazing sun. Of course! Never have God’s movements or his emotional qualities hinged on my actions or my prayers. In the reality of God, no one on earth has complete understanding, and therefore, no one can truly know all the ramifications of their prayerful requests. If God is truly transcendent then nothing can deter him from his chosen purposes, not even the sheer tonnage of human sin and ignorance. And if God is truly immanent, then he “knows me better than I know myself,” as St. Augustine would agree, and I should not fear that God might be duped by prayers possibly derailed by a misguided emotion or desire.

I found confidence, finally, in letting go, rather than desperately trying to keep hold of every loose end of my life. Realizing that God communes with me solely according to his love and wisdom, rather than my vain strivings, I live in freedom. The stress of maintaining a well-checked gauge of moral compliance has vanished. I believe mercy is an integral characteristic of God, and is daily shown to me. To honor him, I resist temptation and sin, but even in my failure, I have faith that my behavior does not alter his love for me. This faith is not false, for it is grounded in God and not myself. It is certain, yes, but certain like a man who, though walking in the dark, whistles all the while. My literary hero, Frederick Buechner, writes in his book, Wishful Thinking, “Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. … Faith is not being sure where you’re going, but going anyway. A journey without maps.”

I recognize that there is struggle in this life. I have first hand experience that in life there are significant moments of confusion, of doubt and separation. I suspect I will experience such times again and again. Nevertheless, I do not despair of my life. I believe that through even the difficult times, God brings laughter. He brings joy. I do not find my legs trembling to stand anymore, and no longer do I have to fake a smile.