So, this topic popped into my head a few weeks ago, while sharing with a friend about the good and bad I’ve seen and faced on my faith journey. I want to give the disclaimer that some of this may be attacking of the school I grew up in. I will not use the school name because of this, and also because I now hold no ill will toward the school, or anyone who was a part of it or associated with it.
To start, I was saved when I was 5. I was sitting in chapel on Wednesday morning, when the speaker talked about what we needed to do to ask Christ into our hearts. Being a shy, nerdy 5-year-old, I decided to just pray a silent prayer to God and ask Him in my heart in that moment. But I didn’t share with anyone the decision I had made.
This is where the negative comes in…
I knew I was saved, but that didn’t jive with the way the school wanted everyone to come to salvation.
See, the way the school worked on that topic was they gave a King James Version (KJV) Bible to every student. In the front of that Bible was a space to write the date you were saved (if you were coming into the school and not a believer). The procedure this school wanted you to follow was to grab a teacher and have them pray with you, and then mark the date in your Bible.
That didn’t happen with me.
As I said before, I was a shy, nerdy, goofy 5-year-old, so speaking with someone about my decision was not high on my list of things I wanted to do. As far as I was concerned, what the speaker said that day made perfect sense (“all you need to do is pray and ask God in your heart. You can do that between you and Him, right now.”).
The school had a different opinion.
I was repeatedly told by teachers that because I hadn’t spoken to and prayed with anyone about the salvation prayer, I was not saved. I spent a good chunk of my childhood believing that if I died I wasn’t really going to heaven. I was going to hell because I didn’t follow their rules to salvation.
I prayed many times, broken and in a ball in the corner, asking Jesus to come into my heart, and crying that I really meant it. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t saved, just because I didn’t follow the asinine rules of this church/school. It wasn’t until my teenage years that I finally realized I had been saved on that Wednesday morning, the moment my 5-year-old self prayed what was probably a very simple and unassuming prayer.
The method didn’t matter.
The words said didn’t matter.
What mattered was the posture of my heart.
From an early age I had an issue with religion and the church as I knew it. I grew up in a Disciples of Christ church, and Christian home, and attended a Southern Baptist Christian school (or “hell fire and brimstone” if you prefer). I Loved the church I attended, and how progressive the pastor was for it being a more traditional church. I still think back on Brother Dan’s sermons and how much Andy Stanley reminds me of him.
The school, however, was another story.
I so often saw religion get in the way there. What I mean by that, is that I saw the interpretation of our religion, and the “laws” enforced on us get in the way. A prime example is that I was raised on the rhetoric of “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” We had a young man in the school, whom we all were convinced was gay, and every boy and young man, including me, treated him like garbage…like a piece of garbage. What I saw of him, but didn’t pay attention to at the time, was an accomplished athlete, who both played and refereed soccer matches, and a young man who wanted desperately to be accepted by the so-called “Christians” who constantly treated him like he was filth. This has long been one of the greatest shames in my life. He deserved better. I pray he found it.
Fast forward a bit to college, and learning that a close friend, and a young woman on fire for God had come out of the closet. More than that, she did so via Facebook. And why not? What easier way than to just rip the band aid off to everyone. But I don’t think she, or anyone else could have prepared for the self-righteous venom and hate spewed at her. I still remember reading responses I will not mention here and feeling my heart break for her. By this time, I had entered into the theatre department at Tyler Junior College, and had my first experiences of being around homosexual people…and quickly decided that all the bull shit I was fed in school was from a place of ignorance and intolerance. So, you can imagine how I reacted to seeing a life-long friend and fellow believer being verbally eviscerated by some of our closest friends.
At that point, I had enough.
Impose on me and others all of your asinine rules and beliefs (like that DC Talk and Jars of Clay were not Christian bands)…I’ll let that slide. But disown a young woman who poured her heart and soul into your school, exuded the love of Christ with everything in her, and represented the best of what was a very flawed religious belief system being more often than not forced on us…and not just disowned, but very publicly given as many tongue lashings as Christ took actual lashings…Nope. I’m done! My response to that was Fuck your religion and fuck you, you bigoted assholes! I will not be part of people who preach love but spread hate.
Because of that, I spent the better part of a decade away from church. I went when I was home out of obligation. Admittedly also because I did love our sweet little country church, and how truly beautiful and accepting that congregation was/is.
But the wounds left from spending the majority of my early life questioning daily if I would go to hell if I died because I didn’t find salvation the prescribed way this school wanted everyone else to, coupled with watching one of my favorite people on this earth be completely broken by her friends and fellow Christians, and subsequently driven to denounce her faith, was enough for me to walk away from religion.
Thankfully, during this time I never really walked away from God. I made a lot—A LOT—of bad decisions, and mostly kept God in a box in the corner until I needed Him. But Just as I never severed the strand left attached to my heart, He continued to strengthen that strand, adding to it even though I couldn’t/wouldn’t see it for the longest time.
About 9 years ago I felt a nudge to get back into to church. I thought, “this is Austin. Surely church people here are better than what I walked away from.” So I started attending Bethany United Methodist, which is just up the road from the place I now call HOME. There was nothing wrong with Bethany. I just wasn’t connecting there.
One day a coworker heard me talking to another about how I felt like I just couldn’t find a church I connected with. So, she told me to check out Gateway. It bears mentioning that the two times God spoke to me in my time away from religion, and barely hanging on to Him, it was through friends who weren’t even practicing in their faith. The first was a college friend and drinking buddy who gave me the devotional My Utmost For His Highest, which became the strand that tethered my heart to God. The second was the coworker, who wasn’t even attending Gateway or church, who encouraged me to check Gateway out.
Four weeks later, I stepped through the doors at Gateway for the first time, and listened to a message from Ted Beasley…5 minutes in and I said to myself, “yep…this is my church home. This dude is hilarious, and not afraid to challenge, while bringing the right amount of truth with the love. I think I can give this church thing another chance.”
What I found at Gateway was not a path back to religion. Sure, there is religion. It’s a church. That’s kinda what they do/are about. But for the first time in my spiritual life, I found a place where I could find relationship over religion. See…God called us to relationship, not religion. Religion gets in the way. Far too often it gets in the way.
It got in the way for me for 10+ years.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t still have religion in my life. Of course I do. I’m not saying it isn’t necessary. What I am saying is it should never…NEVER…get in the way of a relationship with God.
So, If you find yourself seeking God, but fed up or turned off by religion, know that you are not alone. And know that what He seeks is for a relationship with you. A personal relationship. Just that. Just you and Him. He’ll take it from there.
The Random Musings of a Nerdy Christ Follower 