I grew up atheist/agnostic, mostly agnostic, surrounded by atheists, proclaiming atheism. When I was a teenager, a cousin of mine got married and sent a card to all the families within our extended family, and all of the other families got "God bless!" at the bottom of their cards and ours had, "Take care!" or something similar. I laughed and said to my dad, "It's so funny how everybody knows we're atheists. Everybody else got 'God bless', but because they know we don't believe in God, they put 'take care' in ours." My dad got kind of sarcastically angry. "We believe in God, you twit! What the hey! You better believe in God!"
Now, ten or so years later, he's the atheist and I'm the theist. Go figure.
Anyway, it was so clear to everybody around us that we didn't believe. It was clear to me that my friends didn't believe, even though I never asked them about it. It's just not something you bring up when you don't believe in it. It's like talking about unicorns. You don't just sit around sipping coffee and blurt out, "Hey, so how does everybody feel about unicorns?" It's just absurd. So were the potential discussions about God.
Granted, back then I didn't realize that I knew just as much, if not more, about unicorns than I did about God...
There's a Catholic tradition here though. French people swear in church. Not in the building, but the language. The more syllables in the word, the more four-lettery it becomes. The tabernacle is far worse than the host. Tabernacle, pronounced tahbarnak here in Quebec even has it's own fudges. There's tabarouette (your wheelbarrow), tabaslack (um.. that one doesn't translate. It's just syllables), and just tab, when you're too lazy to come up with anything more creative. When you have babies, you have to get them baptized in the Catholic church to make your grandparents happy. And if you decide to get married (which very few do here in Quebec), you might get married in a Catholic church, but usually only if the parents are chipping in enough money to fill it.
That was my experience with religion. That was life. Religion was swear words, a stale wafer, some wine followed by jokes about what the priest does with the leftovers, and some traditional, meaningless mumbling on special occasions.
Community was built on common ground- atheism and mockery of religion.
I think of some of the things I've said in the past and I get that reaction, you know? The one where you close your eyes because the humiliation coming from within is just so overwhelming that they close automatically while you try to grasp onto an inhale? You let out this vocal sigh of disappointment and the return to breathing just stalls and shuts your eyes. You open them again, feeling like a total ass, hoping just the expression you have on your face might send waves of remorse through the universe and right the wrongs you've committed ignorantly. That reaction. I get that.
But back then, when I made those comments, I was the norm. I was the open-minded, enlightened norm.
I cracked open the Bible and you know the rest, but I found myself still in this norm. The norm I grew up in, the hurt I caused, the stereotypes of religion that were everywhere, all of it was suddenly on the other side. All of it was suddenly directed at me.
Fine, I'm a strong girl, I can handle it. Right? And then my friends were also on the other side. And my family. And my strength, without God, would never withstand that kind of rejection and disappointment. But I did have God.
After a while, my people came around. Well, most. Ok, some. :D But one by one, they opened the door a little and caught glimpses of me and realized that maybe even with a lot more Jesus, I might still be me. I might even be more me than I was before. So one by one, I got my people back. Or rather, I'm getting my people back.
I think the way in which I found God is instrumental in it though. God chose me. God picked me, beat me into submission and I had very little say in it. Nobody had any say in it. Just God. So it's very hard for me to be a thumper of the Bible when what got me here was not thumping at all. It was just God. So all I do for my people's salvation is answer questions, right misconceptions and pray. And they're generally surprised by my lack of thumpiness and lack of forcefulness and also with my striving to actually learn about it, to read the Bible and to live out what I read, that all that combined leads them into a greater interest for it. I don't have to push at all. I just have to live it and be there.
But the best resources, I've found, tend to be in the Bible belt. The best sermons, the best pastors, the best talks... And so often, I hear stories of salvation and to be honest, a lot of them bug me. I know they shouldn't. I know I should be all, "Yey! You found Jesus!" but part of me gets all squinty, confused and speechless.
The story that baffles me the most goes like this:
I grew up in church and I loved God and I read my Bible and I was a member of the church, but I still did terrible things. I had sex with people I wasn't married to. I abused my body. I didn't live in the Lord. And then one day, I woke up and realized my life was a mess and I turned to God, and that day, I was saved.
Of course, they don't say it like that. They leave out the "loved" part at the beginning. And I sit there thinking that loved is there. It was there all along and even if you did bad things and rebelled against God, it was still there. You just weren't ready to be good yet. You know?
Yes, Jesus redeems. And maybe He redeemed all your sins and changed your sinning ways. Or maybe you're still equally broken today as you were yesterday, but you realized it's a one way ticket to being unfulfilled?
Like a pastor said, and I already quoted in the blog before, "It's not about trying not to sin, but about being satisfied in God." So you get that now. But then push comes to shove and times turn badly for you, and you seek the pleasures of this world to help bandaid your wounds. And then you repent, apologizing to God for not trusting Him and so on and so on.
But my problem is this: If you believe that you can't lose your salvation, and you did love God and believe in Jesus even if you didn't know all about what that meant and even if you didn't feel it in its entirety, what makes you saved now and not way back when? And what makes you think you know what it means now? What makes you think you really understand what it is? What keeps you from proclaiming salvation again later when you get beaten down by God again later, find a clearer understanding of God later and feel even closer to God later?
I guess my point is growing up without God at all was difficult. I didn't know it then, I didn't know what I was missing because I'd never had God, but from this perspective, to have had God when I was enduring the things I had to endure probably would have made them a lot less overwhelming and if I had believed I was a child of God who was to be treated with value, some of the things I endured might not have happened at all. But then I hear these stories where people grew up with God but didn't fully appreciate Him, and it bothers me. Not because of their lack of appreciation in the moment, but because of their lack of appreciation NOW.
I look back at my godless life and there is God ALL over it. All over. There are times when I somehow had strength that I was not capable of. There are times when things could have gone terribly wrong and should have, but didn't. There are times when I was clearly protected and literally saved when I should have died. There are countless times when I stood back up again when any normal person would have just stayed down.
Just the fact that God made me phobic of every possible method of suicide was a gift in itself. It still is.
I had no God growing up, but God had me anyway. God took care of me. I was God's child even when I wasn't seeing Him at all. I was God's child when I was bashing Him and laughing at Him. I was God's child when I was mocking His believing children. I was always God's child.
It is so hard for me to hear these stories where God isn't there because the person in question isn't in control of their belief. They loved God. They knew He existed. They knew He was watching over them. But they didn't reciprocate appropriately and therefore, they must not have been saved yet.
Tell me what that says about the grace and mercy of God?
And now, they're saved, and talking about the Gospel. They're saying how they weren't saved by deeds but by God's grace. So why now? Why now rather than way back when you were not good enough for God? Why now rather than when you were a rebellious, unrepentant sinner?
Because chances are, you'll hit a point in the not-so-distant future where you'll realize that this you, the you of this moment right now who is so sure of your salvation, didn't know God at all. And you'll panic and bow down before Him and repent and apologize and pray for mercy and grace. And you'll tell the arrogant, self-righteous Christians around you that but by the grace of God are you saved. And you'll be humble, and you'll have that reaction I described above where you close your eyes after a deep, vocal sigh of disappointment at your past self and vow never to be so arrogant as to take for granted God's mercy and your salvation again.
And it will happen over and over and over and over as long as you live and love God.
So how do you know when you were saved? How do you know which one of those moments is the one?
How about we let God decide? How about we quit worrying about when it happened and work on what it means?
I went from not believing at all to believing and I can't really tell you when it happened. I know when I finished reading the book of John after the book of Matthew, I had tears in my eyes because John so loved Jesus and that love was a beautiful thing for a beautiful person. I know that that was the first time I really felt an emotional connection to Jesus. But was that empathy for the character of Jesus in a book? Or was that an emotional connection to Jesus Himself? I don't know. All I know is that God decided the path in which I would find Him. And the end result was that I found Him. The end result was that I found a love for Him that was strong enough to endure the harshest criticism and abandonment by nearly all of the people I loved and depended on. I found a love for Him that has endured some of the hardest trials in my life so far.
I found a strong love for Him which six months ago I thought couldn't get stronger and today, blows that love out of the water. I found a love for Him that grows with everything I learn and fires up the passion in me to learn more.
Does it really matter when it happened?
If I say I was saved on such and such a day, to me that adds a control factor in there. It's like saying God and I weren't united because I wasn't ready. But we were. I just didn't see it. Just because I didn't see it, doesn't mean the bond between us wasn't there.
I haven't spoken to my mom in a few years. She doesn't know where I live because that's how I want it. We are separated. But that doesn't mean we aren't still bonded. I can deny it all I want. I can hate her, I can banish her from my life, I can disrespect her, I can rebel against her, but whatever I do can not change the fact that I am her child. She might not love me, she might not love me in the way I need to be loved, or she might love me entirely and I just reject it. Regardless, I am her child. Nothing will ever change that. She might not be a mom, she might not be mother material, she might be neglectful and broken, but she still gave birth to me and there is a bond there. I grew inside of her. Her body sustained me. From her life grew mine.
Jesus reconciles us with God and when we realize the power in that, it's a beautiful thing. But that bond was always there. We are God's children. We broke the relationship, but we are His children. We broke our end, but if God is God, He can do whatever He wants. Even if we're far from Him, He can choose to be close to us. He can be in our lives even if we don't want Him to be or don't acknowledge Him. He is God. He can.
So why have a salvation day? Why have a salvation story around a specific event? Why not wonder if maybe the moment it dawned on us that Jesus is God and we need Jesus was not the actual moment of our salvation? Why not wonder if maybe God had been working for a long time to get us to that point? Why not appreciate the presence of God in our lives before the moment we decided to give up control?
Why not quit feeling so prideful about the moment we felt something and just let God be God?
God is God and only He knows my heart, my future, my soul and the true state of my salvation.
But by the grace of God am I saved.
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