The youngest of three children, I was born into a Christian
family. My parents attended a conservative church in a small, relatively
unknown denomination based on Arminian, or free will, theology. Among my
earliest memories are Sunday school, vacation Bible school, my mother reading
to me from the Bible, and family prayers at the kitchen table. I took
everything I had learned about God and Jesus and the Bible for granted; I
thought everyone knew what I knew and practiced what I practiced when it came
to church and faith. And most people in the small rural town in Texas where I
grew up did.
At the age
of thirteen, I made the decision to be baptized as a public proclamation of the
faith that had taken root in me and grown since my childhood. Our church
practiced only baptism by immersion, and only on older children and adults who
could willingly decide when the right time for them to receive this particular
sacrament was. From that point onward, I was a member of the church, able to
participate in the Lord’s supper and foot washing ceremony, as well as vote in
church elections and hold office if called upon to do so. To a teenager, it
didn’t mean much. There was no miraculous transformation, no white dove
alighting on my shoulder, no emotional reaction to the procedure—just a little
water up my nose, lots of handshakes and hugs, and a sense of “What next?” in
my head and heart.
What came
next was high school and college, the years in which I began to think for
myself and question some of the beliefs I had taken for granted in my
childhood. My spiritual transformation began in my last two years of college,
at a small private liberal arts college affiliated with the Southern Baptist
denomination. It wasn’t a particularly conservative place compared to where I
was coming from. In fact, I remember my Old Testament professor pointing out
that the book of Genesis has two conflicting accounts of the creation story.
That was shocking to me. No preacher in my childhood had ever pointed out such
a thing, and at the time it was almost blasphemous to me to hear that the
Bible, which I had been taught was the inerrant word of God, had contradictory
information in it. I think that was the point at which the lens through which I
had viewed scripture began to change. Formerly I held to a literal interpretation
because that was the predominant lens used by people in the church I grew up
in, but now I began to see scripture in a more historical, cultural, and
linguistic context. That new perspective actually brought the Bible to life for
me. What was once a static document penned by ancient authors was now a dynamic
and organic body of knowledge that I could apply to my own modern life. It was
very liberating.
And that
liberation was a key step in my spiritual development. I began to see questions
not as wicked or rebellious or displeasing to God, but rather as spiritual
activities that grew and strengthened my personal relationship with God. Before
there had been no need for “the still, small voice” that was the Holy Spirit in
my faith practices. All I needed to do was open the Bible, read what it said,
and accept it as literal truth. From that point on I read the Bible, prayed,
and tried to listen to what God had to say to me. It was like really having a
relationship with God where both my heart and my intellect were engaged in
dialogue with my Creator.
Remember the slogan used by the
United Negro College Fund in the 1970’s, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”?
I think God wants us to use our minds as well as our hearts in our faith
journey to God. Our minds are, after all, God-given. When Genesis says we were
created in God’s image, it means we were given intellect, sapience,
self-awareness--a spirit that can think, reason, and feel like no other
creature on this planet. Our minds are what make us human, and it’s
discouraging and frustrating to see human beings, especially other Christians,
box up their intellect and put it away because they are afraid that thinking
for themselves will somehow displease God.
The ability to think and reason is
a gift from God, and God has made it perfectly clear through scriptures that
God is displeased when we ignore our gifts. Isn’t that ingratitude, to ignore
something God-given and deny its place in our identity? If we deny who we are
and who God made us to be, then aren’t we denying the creative work of God in
our lives? Do we not become like the people described by the Apostle Paul in
his letter to the Romans, the people who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie”
and worshipped the created rather than the Creator?
As I see it, I have three choices
when it comes to living the only life God has given me in this world. First, I
can sit back and let others tell me who to be, what to believe and think, and
how to live. The danger in that is that I am easily led astray by people who
claim to know God’s will for me when all along they are manipulating me to
conform to their will. Second, I can reject everything I ever learned and
experienced about God and proclaim that all this religious and faith talk is
hogwash. That would require living an immense lie, because I know from personal
experience and inward searching that God is real and how God has manifested in
my life is real. So, that leaves me with only one other choice: To live my life
authentically and honestly in obedience to God by celebrating who God made me
to be and loving my neighbors as myself; by doing my best to love God with my
entire being simply because God is worthy of that love just by being who God is;
and by not sitting down and shutting up like many of my fellow Christians would
have me do because my thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and even my very being
offend them, but to speak my truth
and listen respectfully and compassionately when others speak their truths. That is why I am a Christian.
