The Christians We Became Instead

I have a friend who promised, drunk, that he could never walk away from the faith. But he could be a bad Christian, he said with a smile. He could be a bad Christian for a while.

Probably earlier in my life I would have been more concerned by this pronouncement, back when maybe I was a better Christian myself. I would have written down his name in my prayer journal, and lifted his situation up to the Lord. But now I'm less worried about people like him than I used to be. As my husband said, "He's not searching; he's figuring." I believe my friend will figure out his life with God. I believe him when he says he will not leave.

I have many friends who were raised Christian; in fact, nearly all of my friends were. It makes us funny sometimes. We grew up listening to obscure music that tried to make abstinence cool. We hotly debated whether to court or date, a complete non-issue to the rest of our peers. We were familiar with King James English long before we were assigned Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade.

Then we turned twenty-one and woke up lost.

When you grow up a good Christian, you don't have to make many decisions for yourself. Most decisions --- down to what music you listen to, what movies you watch, what clothes you wear, and what friends you keep --- are dictated by the standards of your faith community. This fact is supposed to keep you safe. Which it does, sort of, until you get older and are supposed to make decisions for yourself. You have not had practice deciding things. You don't know what you want.

And what is worse, you are burdened with the belief that all your decisions are incredibly meaningful. You believe that each decision could be a life-changer, that one small misstep could lead you down the wrong path...for life. You worry about what your parents think and about what your church friends think and after you've worn those worries out you crash into the scariest question, that is, what does the Almighty think?

I have seen this pressure make people paralyzed. I have seen this pressure make people despair. I have watched as they shake their heads and go on to do everything they have been told they should not do. And why not? It's hard to tell which shoulds to keep and which to throw away. And it only takes one should to break your heart. One day, God asks for one thing too much, and instead of laying it down at His feet, you fling it at Him.

I can hear the good Christians now, defending religion or, at least, defending God. I am not about to debate here what good Christians should or should not do; I am only noting what I have observed. From my limited perspective, I have come to believe that most of the shoulds taught to church kids do more to inculcate self-righteousness and to cover simple fear than to form children who know the One who loves them. It is a paltry Christian upbringing that produces adults who testify to nothing more than the guilt they used to be afraid to feel.

And where do you go after you've hit that place of paralysis, of depair? What do you do then?

Well, you might try lying in bed for a few days. Maybe on the couch. Or try failing a few times: you'll surprise yourself and survive. In addition to those tactics, I also read a lot of intellectual stuff --- nothing without nuance and shades of gray and scores of footnotes. I read dark novels, full of doubts. Then again, I'm a reader. Maybe you would be helped by the open-ended world of Final Fantasy, what do I know? Any way you do it, you begin seeing the world as less unforgiving of trial and error and more amenable to experimentation.

This is not because you have succumbed to a relativistic liberal agenda. This is because you are learning how to live. You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can see for yourself.

At a recent party I overheard a man saying, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." I felt sure that earlier in time he believed he could make absolute statements: words that fit on the thin edge of a knife, straight and sharp. I noted that he continued on to answer the question that made him pause to give this disclaimer, "I can't say anything true without making mistakes." He seemed to still believe that he could say true things. He had only lost the belief that he could say them perfectly.

I admired him for answering the question, for going ahead and making mistakes. I thought of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Church and poster boy for the anxiety-ridden cradle Christian. "Sin boldly," Luther said, because God is a God of forgiveness and redemption. Even if you conclude that you can't avoid making mistakes, tell the truth the best you can anyway. Even if you find some failure unavoidable, live according to the truth the best you can anyway.

So after you've really sinned well, after you've long gone too far, see if you have any memories of a merciful God. See if you can think of a time when you were small when Jesus held your hand, or played in the yard with you chasing fireflies, or came into your heart. Try to remember that God, for that God will run to meet you where you are.

We may find we are much different than the younger versions of ourselves. We might have become bad Christians, rather than the people we meant to become. That's okay because when we strove to emulate our idea of who we thought good Christians should be, we about drove ourselves crazy. We had not yet learned that we cannot say anything true without making mistakes. We had forgotten that Jesus chased fireflies with us in the dark, for no good reason.