How I am Still a Christian

The Good Friday post concluded with the hope I find blossoming on the cross.  But why am I a Christian now?  Why don’t I search for hope and joy by other means?

One easy answer is I was raised in a Christian family and back in the day, the country was more overtly a Christian nation.  Until I was 21, these familial and cultural forces were the dominant reasons for my belief.  I did question parts of my beliefs from time to time, though never seriously.  Then, during the Spring semester of my senior year in college, as I sat in Doug Geivett’s apologetics class, I realized that the stuff I professed to believe wasn’t anything I had experienced – especially joy.  God seemed more like a distant concept than a Heavenly parent.  For the most part, I didn’t buy the historical arguments for God’s existence, either, though I wanted to be able to believe them. 

Here began crisis of faith #1: was there a God at all and could I know that he had any interest in me? 

My questioning grew into a mild depression: I felt spiritually despondent, confused by the lack of experience of God in my life.  I confided in my parents that I had this confusion, and they suggested that I come home for the weekend so we could talk – they’re both excellent listeners and very empathetic – and that seemed like a pretty good idea.  They introduced me to the practice of spiritual warfare praying, or the act of confronting evil and destructive forces with the authority of Christ.  I was open but fairly skeptical, until they told me that they’d essentially done this sort of thing on my behalf when I was 15, a point to which I could point as a major demarcation in my attitude and behavior.  So, I followed their lead.  What followed involved no sparks, nothing creepy, and it was really short – about 10 minutes or so.   I spent Saturday night at home and drove back to school on Sunday.   

Within the week, I was hopeful again and noticed a sudden and very positive attitude change.  I felt joyful.  I was dumbfounded.  How could this be?  Was it a purely psychosomatic reaction, or was something else going on, some kind of spiritual experience for which I was unprepared and of which I was ignorant?  Of course, I can’t prove in any physical or deductive way that it was spiritual – the spiritual is a dimension inaccessible to objective investigation in our primary, four-dimensional world.  But, subjectively, I knew that something real had happened, clearly for my betterment, and it happened in the name of Jesus Christ.    

Crisis of faith #2 was multi-phased, with troughs in the Summer of ’94, the Winter of ’96, and finally the Summer of ’99.  

After graduating from college, I spent some time with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks, essentially as a chaplain in first Everglades and then Grand Teton National Parks.  After this, I spent 10 months recruiting for the ministry.  The time was spiritually formative for me, and I experienced God’s presence, answers to prayer, and sudden and unexpected provision.  At the time I felt a clear sense that I should go to seminary, which I ultimately did in the Fall of ’95.  Before, during, and after that stretch, I began to be plagued by questions again.  I had been studying the philosophy of religion and systematic theology and grew especially concerned with the exclusive claims of Christ.  Following Jesus, it seemed, was a good thing, but was it really right, more so than the other major World religions? 

Then one night in February of 1996, as I drove along Half Day Road in Deerfield, IL, I cried out: “God, I can’t figure this stuff out!”   What happened this time also caught me off guard: I heard directly and immediately from God.  It wasn’t an audible voice, but a distinct and clear impression of words; God said: “You don’t have to, just be faithful.”  Once again, I cannot prove that my mind didn’t create those words.  What I can say is that I have an undeniable personal experience that these words came from beyond me. 

Now I had a break – I simply had to try to continue living in faith, I didn’t have to sort it all out.  I also knew that I couldn’t remain in seminary as long as I wasn’t sure about Jesus’ role in relation to God.  Through the next 3 ½ years, I lived in faith, sort of.  In reality, I was functioning as a deist: God was there, I couldn’t deny the reality of my prior experiences, but I was twice shy about trusting God to live fully in faith.  During this stretch, my girlfriend became my wife, maybe against her better judgment.  I’ll always be grateful to her friend Dawn for encouraging her to stick with me. 

But Lisa knew that I couldn’t continue dwelling at the fork in the road forever, that eventually I needed to resolve the doubts I had.  In August of 1999, she bottom-lined me: “Steve, you have to sort this out.  Whatever you conclude, I won’t leave you.”  I knew she was right, but until I had that relational freedom from her, I didn’t feel strengthened to wrestle with the questions again.  I’d been living in fear – not in faith – that I might get the “wrong” answer.  Now, I could pursue my doubts honestly.

I sought out an elder in the church we were attending for a conversation about my doubts.  He was an unusual guy: he was not a minister, but his adult Sunday school class attracted about 80-100 people per week.  He’d earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Michigan and had taught himself Greek so he could read the New Testament in its original written form.  I figured that if there were answers to my questions, Phil would have them.  

So, I called to make an appointment to see Phil, and then began writing out my questions.  When the evening came to meet with him, I was prepared and skeptical that he could handle what I was about to dish out.  When we sat down, Phil listened as I broadly described the questions I had for him.  His response was interesting: “That’s great, we’ll get to those, but first tell me who is Jesus Christ to you?”  I could hardly believe my ears as I listened to my own response: he was a great teacher, a moral leader, a wonderful example – how many times had I earlier in life smirked proudly at those responses?!  In the discussion that followed, Phil pointed me back to the reality that I was avoiding: God was not an abstraction, about which we could argue, limit, and define.  God was a person – immaterial, for sure – but very definitely a person.  And the proposal was this: was I willing to trust that God wanted the best for me, that Jesus would lead me, and that the Holy Spirit would grow me (taken together, this is what Christians mean by a personal relationship with God)?  Phil said, pointing to a chair in his living room, “A relationship with God is like your relationship with this chair: you can acknowledge its existence, but unless you risk by sitting in it, there won’t be any chance you’ll experience the support and rest it’s capable of providing.”

I was 29 when my doubts began to ebb: I prayed to have the faith – not a gossamer hope, but living out my beliefs in spite of my questions – that month, and have been growing since. 

I’ve been fortunate to have spiritual experiences like those above that keep me anchored in my faith in Christ.  They’re sign posts and like Jesus' miracles, they’ve served to point me back in the right direction.  Most of the questions I hoped Phil would answer that night 15 years ago are still with me, but they’ve long since quit vexing me.  I’m buttressed by these spiritual experiences, motivated by relationship, and fueled by spiritual growth.   

Doubt isn’t a thing to fear and it’s unreasonable to imagine that doubts will stop for the thoughtful Christ follower. The life of faith in Christ works – it grows – not by obtaining answers to questions but through continuing to sit in the chair even though the questions remain.  My growing faith in Christ is belief in action, leading to a changed character.

But what about Easter?  What exactly do I see in this day that moves me so much?  Why is the story of the crucifixion and the empty tomb so powerful for me?  Why, as I acknowledged in the prior post, even though I have questions about how Jesus' death pays for my sin do I continue to believe it? 

Beauty.

And, in my mind, there’s simply nothing more beautiful than self-sacrifice.  When a person values another to such an extent that he gives his life for them – a response thoroughly inexplicable by Darwinian impulses – I know goodness exists.  God knows the beauty in self-sacrifice, too, and I think one way to look at Jesus’ death and resurrection and draw out joy and hope is to focus on the beauty of God’s self-sacrifice via Jesus’ death.  And then there’s the empty tomb: a mystery, to be sure, but in my view, evidence that the story of Easter doesn’t stop with the beauty of God’s self-sacrifice, but extends to include hope and joy in God’s power and majesty. 

If you’re reading this on Easter, you can know that I’ll be reveling in God’s majesty, in the beauty of Jesus’ sacrifice, and in the joy of living a life that’s being transformed, one that’s being turned slowly from selfishness to God-focused. You can know that I don't have answers to all the mysteries but still enjoy their reality. I hope that’s your experience today, too. 

   

The Thief on the Cross

Today Christ followers celebrate the roughly 1,985^th anniversary of Jesus’ death.  Growing up Lutheran, I observed this day more reverently than many people do today, but it was even true in the 70s: we had special chapel services to attend in school and we were all taught to reserve the exclamation “Alleluia!” until Easter morning.  The days of Lent – and especially Good Friday – were somber.  I'm not Lutheran anymore but I do miss some of that ritual from time to time.

By most everyone’s accounts, Jesus was a holy man, an enlightened leader, a prophet of selflessness.  For others of us, he was (and is) our priest before the one true God.  And for a smaller group still, our king.  That he would be executed and endure great pain is a sad, sad thing.  I’d like to spend a little more time this year dwelling on that aspect and be a little less quick to look past Good Friday to Easter.

What Jesus accomplished on the cross has been a source of debate for devout Christians for years. Almost all Christians have seen the crucifixion as the key event in human history, the apex in a long list of ways in which Jesus’ life, ministry, and death mirrored and fulfilled the Old Testament practices and prophecies.  Jesus' was the final sacrifice, the one that rendered the Old Testament sacrifices obsolete, and one made by God on our behalf to redeem us.

How exactly did this redemption work, though?  The answer I learned growing up Lutheran went basically like this:

·         We are sinful, not just in action but also in character (“original sin”)

·         God is perfect and cannot tolerate sin

·         Nevertheless, God loves us

·         However, sin may be removed only by perfect sacrifice, which we can't offer

·         God, in his love for us, sent Jesus to be a perfect sacrifice for us – to pay it once and for all.

·         If we receive this free gift, God will blot out our sin and recognize us as righteous.

I’ve had many questions with this narrative over the years.  How does the imputation of Adam’s sin to my account work?  How does a blood sacrifice cover sin?   Were animal sacrifices in ancient Israel effective to satisfy God’s holy wrath only when that satisfaction was received by individuals cognitively and, if not, what exactly must those of us in the New Covenant understand about Jesus’ sacrifice?

You won’t find answers to those questions here.  If you think you have some good answers, I’m all ears.  I spent roughly the years of 1994 to 1999 searching for those answers, and today they’re simply not vexing.  I receive Jesus' sacrifice as payment for my sin, though I do it now more out of a sense of buying into the teaching and practice, rather than because it all makes perfect sense.  For me, I’m at a spot in life where I’m comfortable recognizing that doctrinal mysteries will always be with us. 

Doctrine and the exercise of reflecting on it remain important to me today.  Lutherans love doctrine and confirmed Lutherans can, on average, articulate why they believe what they believe about Good Friday & Easter as well or better than members of any other Christian denomination on the face of the Earth.  The particular branch of Lutheranism I grew up in was especially concerned about keeping church doctrine pure.  That's not to say that they were only focused on keeping doctrine free of contamination; doctrine's ultimate purpose is personal for Lutherans, but that part does sometimes get lost in practice. 

My own views on the role of doctrine have changed since my Lutheran days.  I now see doctrine as less of a demand and more of a tool, less of a line in the sand and more devotional.  Doctrine as devotion draws us back to the moment when Jesus hung on a cross gasping for air and makes us imagine why he had to endure that.  It pulls us into the hollowness that Mary and John must’ve felt when the soldier plunged the spear between Jesus’ ribs, and they saw not so much as a flinch from his lifeless body - did they sense the theological weight of the moment or were they simply overcome with their own grief?  It causes me to reflect on the despair his disciples might have felt before the resurrection: did we just waste 3 years of our life following a false Messiah?  Reflecting on these moments doctrinally makes me ask “Why, oh God?” and “What does this mean for me?”  Actually, that last question is a pretty good Lutheran response, but you probably have to be Lutheran to get why. 

What does it mean for me, though?  I find myself these days I looking back before the point of Jesus’ death, to the conversation recorded in Luke 23: 39-43.  One of the criminals being executed with Jesus mocked him.  The other one had a totally different response.  The second criminal rebuked the first, pointing out that unlike Jesus, each of them deserved to be punished.  After this he turned to Jesus and said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus then promised him famously, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

We have no reason to expect that the second criminal knew any doctrine about the “atoning sacrifice” or the guilt of “original sin” or how the gruesome death he was witnessing up close was a sensible means of “propitiating the holy wrath of a righteous God.” Jesus didn’t demand that the criminal first study Luther or Calvin, or that he recite the Apostles’ Creed, or any of that stuff – he couldn’t because none of it existed yet.  The second criminal was simply responding to Jesus: he was turning from his own selfishness to God-centeredness.  He knew he was wrong and God was right and he was appealing to Jesus for mercy.  All Jesus had to do was to look into the man’s heart to see that he desired to leave the profane and enter the holy. 

And that was enough for Jesus to admit him to Paradise.

As I reflect on the events of Good Friday, I'm drawn again to this simple dynamic - one where I reach a personal crisis, a clear sense of the inadequacy of my own works, and respond by turning from the old and appealing confidently to God for mercy to enter the new.  I find Easter hope blooming already in the moments before Jesus died, not just on Sunday morning.  I may never be able to determine which propositions are essential for right belief but, fortunately, I can experience salvation through Jesus without having perfect answers to all of the "what does this mean?" questions.  I can enjoy the free gift of redemption simply by turning my heart faithfully from my inward selfishness toward Jesus.