To my friends of various faiths – Part 1

Hi friends of mine who wouldn’t include yourself in the “Christian” category,

How are you?  Good?  Good.  I’m great.

So, last week I got an idea to write an open letter to any of you, my blog readers, who aren’t Christians.  Why?  I get sort of sick of all these obnoxiously irrelevant blogs speaking Christanese and being way too preachy.

I’m humbly hoping to give a view of Christianity from my perspective that isn’t annoying, filled with weird jargon while being informative on what is the single most important thing in my life: my relationship with God.   Also, I heard Jimmy Kimmell explain on his show the other day what Christianity is and it was total crap.  It was all backwards & contorted.  I’d like to put something out there other than Jimmy Kimmell’s explanation.

Ya’ll know I’m extra wordy, so I’ll break it up into 4 parts, 4 posts, 4 days.

Part 1 – My own journey toward Christianity…

When I was a kid, I didn’t ever wonder if God was real.  Surprisingly enough, it all made a lot of sense to me from the very beginning.  The fact that someone made everything around us was a lot more reasonable to me than something made everything around us.

Even as a kid I thought the idea of everything “banging” into existence was pure ludicrous.  I still find it as obnoxious a theory as the Big Bang theorists find me for believing that a loving intelligent designer put this whole shebang into being.

Oh well, you say tomato, I say tuh-mah-toe.  Point is, as a kid, everything happening by chance was too big of a leap for me.  I understand that for some of you the opposite was true: God throwing it all together in 7 days is also quite a leap.

When I was in 4^th grade, I remember one of my teachers –Mrs. Bourque (pronounced “Burk”) telling a bunch of us about Jesus and what he did for us.  I remember she wore her hair in big old-Hollywood waves & it had bounce.  There was always a lot of movement in her hair when she walked.  Her hair had some serious body.  She was quite thin & tall.  She kept a lot of order in her classroom and I remember loving her as a teacher.  Looking back, I know it’s because I was craving stability and she provided it in plenty.  She ran a tight ship, that woman.

I remember her giving this presentation about Jesus and asking us kids to come forward to pray and invite him into our life in an official sort of way.  She had mentioned something about going to hell, but I don’t remember that being a primary motivation for me.  I remember believing what she said about Jesus being God’s son and Jesus dying on the cross.  She said God was good, he was loving, that he wanted to know us in real and practical ways.

I didn’t understand how it all worked together, what exactly Jesus had to do with me, or what would change in my life, but I do remember finding the story captivating.

The idea that there was a God and that He happened to be a kind God (as opposed to a mean old grinch) and that He loved me was appealing.  I also vaguely remember thinking this was a good idea because maybe God could help me with stuff.

At that point in life I had been deeply grieved by the kids in my neighborhood whose parents beat them and called it a “whooping.”  I was years into being molested by my own disgusting father and knew instinctively that it wasn’t just me, but the world had a need for a God who loved us.  It seemed like we could all use a little help.

Beyond that, for reasons I can’t quite explain, something was stirring up within me.  I knew that I needed there to be a God, and I needed him to be loving, and I needed him to be in charge of stuff and I needed him to love me and I needed to know that everything would be okay not just for me, but for that poor puppy down the street who I saw being beat with the metal end of a belt.  I cried myself to sleep over that puppy, and if there was a God, and if he had any say in anything that had to do with things that were just blatantly wrong, I knew I wanted to be on his side.

It seemed to me that was what Mrs. Bourque was trying to say.  Maybe as a kid I inferred meaning onto her little Jesus presentation but in any case, I was eager to go forward.  I wanted to be in the God club.  I wanted as much of God as he was willing to give me.  More than anything, I wanted to feel safe & it seemed like this was my best shot.

To be fair, I will say that before Mrs. Bourque’s presentation I had grown up hearing about God from my mom.  She had converted to Christianity when she was pregnant with me.  She had taken me to Church and I had been attending a Christian school since kindergarten.  So, this idea of God wasn’t sprung on me, but it was the first time –that I can remember- someone asking me to do something specific about what I was ready to publicly acknowledge.

I went forward and from there the memory fades out.  I think we said a little prayer together, but after that she never brought any of it up again.

In fact the “what-to-do-now-that-you-are-a-Christian” conversation never came up again in any of the Christian circles I ran in.  If it did, it was woefully inept.  Downright, ineffective.  I’m not just blaming my Christian parent, my Church or my particular Christian school for my lack of growth post 4^th grade, but I do think Churches need to drastically rethink how to help our kids grow spiritually.  That’s another blog post & a big tangent.

Anyway, today as I considered my 4th grade introduction to Jesus, I’m saddened that it wasn’t until I was 19 years old, that I was challenged to actually incorporate my beliefs into a lifestyle.  Not just the same old same old Zombie response, “I’m a Christian!” but an actual way of life.

So to begin this series on Christianity, I wanted to start with how I came to choose to follow Jesus and subsequently why I sucked at it for 10+ years.

Now, this was my 4th grade faith.  Meeting my 4th grade needs.  My faith still needed to grow up.  If your wondering when (and if) my faith progressed past this -past meeting basic emotional needs- it was later.  Promise, there will be more on that…

So stay “tuned” for a whopping 3-4 more posts about Christianity and how it’s expressed itself in my life.

Any of you (of any religious background) what’s your story?  What were you taught (or not taught) growing up?  I’m interested in hearing from you!

If you’ve been a blawker (blog stalker/no commenter) of mine for a long time now’s your chance to pipe in!