Was the Old Church Lady Right?

It’s hard being a Christian these days. It’s not as easy as it once seemed to be.

Being a young Christian was really quite simple for me: Believe all the right things, abstain from tobacco and alcohol (busted), don’t dance too close to my girlfriend (busted), don’t gamble (busted again), and of course attend church as much as possible (got an A).

My early Christian life seemed so easy, so well defined, so clearly understood. Such as only the saved go to heaven; everyone else goes to hell forever. That’s pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you say? Who could argue with something this clear, this is back and white? Not me.

I lived in a binary world consisting of clearly defined opposites. Heaven and hell, Christians (good guys) and non-Christians (bad guys), righteous and unrighteous, male and female, blacks and whites, straight people and those other folks no one really wanted to talk about.

Living the Christian life was a matter of adapting my lifestyle to the Bible, literally understood of course as God’s perfect word . Who in their right mind would ever question the authority of the Bible? God forbid. I didn’t. Besides, wasn’t it perfect?

But then that little old church lady showed up and she seemed to know something I didn’t: My going to college was a serious threat to my faith. She knew this. She told me so herself: “Don’t go to college, they’ll ruin you.” She knew! She may have been ignorant but she had sense enough to know that  college would change me forever. How did she know this? I wondered!

Well I did go to college. I lost my innocence virginity (please, it’s a metaphor). I learned some pretty cool things though. My world got bigger and so did God and so did my faith!

Like Abraham I answered the call to wander beyond the borders of my native land (for me a small island) and beyond the significant influences on my early life (some of those early influences I still treasure, just not all of them).

I’m still wandering. Still learning. Still forming. Still growing. Still developing. Still becoming.

Yes I have learned some really magnificent things about life, faith, and God. I also learned a lot about myself. Many of those who knew me back in the day, in what the late Marcus Borg described as the “pre-critical” stage of my faith, believe that the prophetic words of the old church lady had indeed come true: College ruined me!

Well, enough rambling. I’ll get to the point.

Christianity is much more difficult for me these days because it’s not as black and white as it once was; it has evolved into something colored in shades of gray.

Certainty has evolved into reasonable doubt. Okay i admit it.

My binary world has evolved into a more complex tapestry of blended opposites. That’s a fancy way of saying that you can't put God in a box. He’s too big and too mysterious to fit inside of our own humanly constructed booths. Peter tried that once, remember?

The old binary realities once colored in black and white no longer hold absolute meaning for me. Quite frankly I am not so comfortable with absolutes these days—but isn’t that where faith comes into the picture? Isn’t faith a gray sort of thing?

Is the Bible the absolute authority for all Christians? Many believe it is even though they have never read it from cover to cover. I believe it is much more nuanced than this. Do I read the Bible seriously as my sacred text? I do! Yet I struggle with it sometimes and if you are an honest person you will admit this too.

Jesus once said that new wine could never be placed in old wineskins. What a great metaphor. The new wine ferments and the old dry skins burst open and spill all the wine.

My new “post-critical” (again Marcus Borg) faith cannot be squeezed back into the shape of my “pre-critical” faith. It’s impossible. I can only move forward and so should you. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

Don’t allow the old church lady to intimidate and frighten you of growth, of larger horizons, of an expanded worldview, of learning new and higher things about life, faith, and even God—and yourself.

I promise, you will be amazed at what God will allow you to learn with some effort and a lot of faith. Trust God for the growth. Remember the words of Jesus:

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!” 

Real freedom comes when one steps out into this big wide world and trusts God for the knowledge of knowing and experiencing Him in new ways!

Well the old church lady was right after all . . . and I’m so glad she was.