Just As I Am

Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger), just as she is, in a still from the film “Bridget Jones Diary.”

I don’t think you’re an idiot at all. I mean, there are elements of the ridiculous about you. Your mother’s pretty interesting. And you really are an appallingly bad public speaker. And, um, you tend to let whatever’s in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the consequences…But the thing is, um, what I’m trying to say, very inarticulately, is that, um, in fact, perhaps despite appearances, I like you, very much. Just as you are.

~ Mark Darcy (to Bridget Jones) in Bridget Jones’s Diary

In the decade I spent as a teenager attending Sunday services (morning and evening) at the Southern Baptist church in which I largely was reared spiritually, I must have witnessed (and occasionally participated in) hundreds of altar calls.

Invariably, while we waited for the Holy Spirit to move at each of these altar calls, we, the congregation, sang all six verses of Charlotte Elliott and William B. Bradbury’s hymn, “Just as I Am.” In fact, I believe I’ve sung the words to that hymn more often than any other song in my lifetime. Even more often than “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the Eagles’ “Desperado,” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”― combined.

The second verse, then as now, sometimes puts a lump in my throat:

Just as I am—and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot—
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

The idea that God knows me―all of me―and loves me anyway moves me deeply and in ways for which I have no words.

I did not grow up with a God who was ready to smite me the moment I toed the first blades of grass on the slippery slope of sin. Rather, the God the Southern Baptists introduced me to was a God of grace, mercy, and unconditional love.

My understanding of salvation―what we called the born-again experience, back in the 1980s ― was that it was a “one-and-you’re-done” transaction. All I needed to do was open the door of my heart to Jesus and let him in, and I would be forgiven for all sins past, present, and future. My salvation would be assured.

Forever.

No backsies.

I was about 10 years old when I opened the door to Jesus. In he came with his forgiveness and grace, and he set up shop in my heart’s kitchen, making peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches served with Ovaltine and slices of Gala apples on the side. Last time I checked, he was still there doing his thing, and in return I’ve adopted an orthopraxis that can be summed up nicely in a slogan I probably stole from Anne Lamott: striving daily not to horrify Jesus.

I am not perfect.

Far from it.

I am neither pious nor disciplined, neither patient nor particularly long-suffering. I try to start good habits but usually give them up before the requisite 28 days. I’ve never kept a journal for more than a fortnight or successfully awakened early in the morning to have my “quiet time” with the Lord. I’ve never read the Bible all the way through (even though I hold a degree from a Christian seminary of some repute), and I’ve never kept a fast or discipline for all forty days of Lent.

I have a temper. I swear like an Irish lumberjack. I shout at other drivers. I sometimes drink vodka gimlets and make promises I don’t remember the next day. I probably show more cleavage than I should. I’ve never followed a diet I didn’t cheat on. And I’m pretty sure I once got out of a Columbia House music subscription contract by telling the collector that I had died.

I do things I know are wrong; I say things I know I shouldn’t say. My ethics are shaky, my morals are worse, and I am, most assuredly, not a very good Christian.

I’m telling you this because God already knows. God knew about the gimlet thing before I was even a flirtatious wink in my father’s eye. And God knows about the ridiculous thing I’ll say next week, and the lie I’ll tell when I’m eighty, and the reason why the sound of uilleann bagpipes makes me cry, and why I can’t wheel a shopping cart back to its parking lot corral without hearing my uncle Dodi’s voice say, “You and your brother are good citizens.”

God knows me. All of me. Every inch. Every hair. Every thought. Every zit. Every fart. Every step. Every breath. Every hope, fear, sorrow, joy. Every everything.

King David knew this, and that brother was a major fuckup. He did some horrible shit, and he suffered the harsh consequences, but they didn’t include God throwing up God’s hands and stomping away in a huff. God was there when David made epic mistakes, God was there for the ensuing heartbreak, and God was there when David got back on his feet, righted his course, and walked on.

And God loved David the whole time.

So I tend to believe David when he writes in Psalm 139:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.

[I]n your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. (v. 1–3, 16 ESV)

There is a freedom in being known. God sees me. The real me. All of me. All the time. Just as I am.

And even with all that data to go on, even though God sees everything, God loves me. Just as I am. God is Mark Darcy to my Bridget Jones. God loves me―even when I show Daniel Cleaver my enormous granny panties. God fights for me. God pursues me. God never gives up on me. God never stops loving me.

Bridget Jones’ enormous granny panties.

I bring all that I-am-ness with me when I read the Bible, which, frankly, I do more now than I ever have in the past. Perhaps that’s because I stopped trying to read it “right.” I used to believe that I wasn’t educated enough to engage well with Scripture. I wouldn’t get it. I’d misunderstand. I’d do it wrong.

Nowadays, here on the other side of 40, I don’t care as much about right or wrong.

I lean more into authenticity and figure there’s nothing I can misunderstand or dislike in the Bible that someone before me―eons before me―hasn’t thought, felt, and expressed already.

A few years ago, while I was visiting with Elie Wiesel at his home in New York City, we talked about how he studies the Bible daily. For hours at a time. It’s something he’s done for most of his life to hold both himself and God accountable.

In the Jewish tradition, he told me, people have the right―some might go so far as to say it’s an obligation―to take the tough questions directly to God. God can handle it. Hebrew Scripture recounts how Jeremiah shook his fists at God and angrily accused the Almighty of taking advantage of him. And dude was a prophet.

Maybe that’s why in those rare moments when I’ve been pissed off at God, I’ve also felt, strangely, closest to God. There’s an intimacy in anger expressed. You shout, you tell the truth, you say how you feel, and you work it out.

God wants to be in a relationship with us and, in order to do that, we have to keep talking. The Bible is one of the ways the dialogue continues. And unlike dining etiquette, polite conversation with God puts no topic off-limits. Go ahead and put your elbows on the table. Use the wrong fork. It’s okay. (Whom are you trying to impress?)

God knows us. All of us. God knows everything about every single one of us.

Still, God loves us. Madly. Just as we are.

And there’s nothing we ever could do to make God love us less―or more.

SELAH.