As I've said before, I was raised in a Christian home. But there was one aspect of being "raised Christian" that I was not exposed to: youth group. A church youth group is one of the most common organization features within any church. (The only exception I know of is the peculiar group of "Family-Integrated Churches", which are quite stringent about having a church environment where all age groups are represented in a more family-based approach to church. I've only seen this model in really conservative, quasi-presbyterian/baptist churches. I actually agree with them a lot in principle, and I think that a church should be like one big family and we shouldn't always segregate people by age, but all church age groups can learn from other age groups much like a family can. Also implied in the whole idea of a youth group being treated primarily according to its age i.e. younger, and therefore much more immature, is the theory of "adolescence," which in these days of modern psychology is rarely questioned. There is a refutation of this entitled "the myth of adolescence," which is part of the book the Harris twins wrote called Do Hard Things (I wrote about it here)). My parents decided to leave the church I was raised in before I was old enough to experience any sort of community as a semi-adult in the youth group (that darn adolescence). Most, or all of what I know about church (college student ministry doesn't quite count), I know from when I was a child. I will admit, though I know my parents would probably lament this, that I feel like this has stunted me greatly not only in my experience in a church community, but also in my maturity as a Christian (the two, however, are undeniably related). I do not at all intend to say that this was my parents' intent, but rather think that it was the only thing they could have done given the situation and that our family was better off to no longer be a part of that church. The details aren't really important, but I will just say that the church eventually split because of some crazy political and leadership issues related to power-corruption and immaturity. That's what the body of Christ is all about right? It's ridiculously sad to think about.
What I want to say about it is that while it probably was best to leave that church, I still had a far way to go in terms of church community. I still do. I still struggle with being able to commit myself in service to a group of people in a church. I still feel unable to stay focused and keep plodding with people in my life. Contributing to this I think is my strong dependence on family. Maybe it's an idol for me. Deep inside me, at some point, was put the assumption that things will get done by someone else, that I don't have to take an active part in community, that someone will make that committment in my place. When I was a kid, it was my parents and my family that filled the need for community. These days things must be done by me or else nothing will ever happen. And this responsibility is not something I've felt super prepared for in my growing up. In almost every area of my life I have struggled with the idea of a personal responsibility on myself to make sure things are done the way they need to be, whether it be making friends, money management, morality, health, etc. There's some flaw deep inside me that wants so badly to be lazy and let other people take care of the things that are up to me. The responsibility of community is just one aspect of the deeper problem of what I believe is laziness in me.
But I think it's getting better. I know it's gotten better. But the first thing that occurred in me was to actually wake up to the real problem. I think this hit me like a ton of bricks when I got into college and started depending on myself instead of my parents. I got involved with the Wesley Foundation at Texas A&M, which was what I could call my "youth group replacement experience." This is not to say that it was equivalent to a youth group in that it was full of a bunch of silly kids, but more that almost everyone there did have that youth group experience that I missed and it was an obvious trait in them. So in many ways, it was sort of a culture shock to me. I had never experienced a community like that, especially how the Wesley Foundation there is, in which students hang out there all day, and sometimes all night. It was in many ways like a second home for me and many other college students, and some of the best times in my life occurred there. It was also the staging ground for much of my growing up and learning how to be a Christian. I was confronted with my own sin there, though much of it was more a result of just the college environment, and broken down to my confession of it. With this confrontation of my own sin of course led to being tempted precisely in my weakest areas, and let's just say I not only learned of my sin and confessed it, but I also gained the experience of anguishing it. As an understanding of the Law goes, and conversely the Gospel, the more one knows of one's own transgression of the Law, the more one want to transgress it. As Romans 7:7-15 says:
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
As this says, it is not the commands of the law to blame as if they are intrinsically at fault, but simply to point out the great propensity of human beings to violate the statutes of the law based upon their knowledge and awareness of the law. Implied here is the truth that we have a sin nature in us from birth that is the default mode of the human heart, and the greater moral knowledge that is fed to it, the greater its potential violation. The problem when this enlightenment of the Law occurs in the Christian is a harsh confrontation with one's own total depravity and incapability to live in accordance with its commandments. True humility, I believe, is in part the ability to see oneself in the light, without personal biases towards the truth or falsehood of one's moral characteristics. It is seeing sin where there is sin, and virtue where there is virtue. It does not call pride a virtue, but rather a vice, much to the chagrin of the hardworking American who prides himself in, well--pride.
That's the gist of what I faced in college, in terms of sin realization, learning to confess it, and repent from it. But repentance is really its own entity. I believe confession without repentance is the definition of hypocrisy. More on this next...
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