Past Few Years - Part 5 - Confession

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...

Past Few Years - Part 1 - Starting College

I was raised in a Christian home and my parents are the most faithful and trustworthy people I know. I professed my sins at an early age (7-10?) and I know at that time that I understood the Gospel: that I was a sinner and that only Jesus’ payment on the cross in my place was sufficient to “wash away my sins,” and “make me white as snow,” acceptable to God, and take me to heaven. I remember singing that song with my mom when I was very young. I also remember attempting to witness to one of my Mormon friends when I was in 2^nd or 3^rd grade, and realizing that he just didn’t understand what I was talking about. I remember quoting Romans 6:23 to him: that he would die for his sins and without hope if he didn’t have Christ. I remember feeling genuine sadness that he didn’t seem to understand what I was saying about Jesus. I know I was a Christian at this point and that God had completely changed where I was headed in my life through the love and security of my parents.

But the worldview I developed, almost upon stepping into my dorm room into a new universe was without the security and the easy answers to life’s hardest questions I knew back in my parents’ home. Actually the first encounter I can remember with skepticism (which was what I faced in college) was in high school at a book store with my mom. She was looking for a book in the Christian section, so I browsed with her. I came across a book that suggested something about the question of how we know the Bible is true (I can’t remember exactly what it was). I remember being dumbfounded at the notion of questioning the Bible’s veracity, so I immediately began to grasp at straws as to why I believed it. But I came up with next to nothing. In a conversation with my mom at that bookstore, she came near tears when I bluntly asked her “how DO we know the Bible is God’s word?” I guess the shock of her discovering that I didn’t know combined with my shock at the same was hard to swallow. I remember being terrified inside as to the implications of my inability to answer this question. Was everything I said believed a sham? Was I just adopting my parent’s beliefs? Was the Bible the word of God or just an old book?

Later, in college, I would write an essay titled: “Why Do You Believe the Bible?” I sent it out to almost everyone I had the email address of, which in hindsight probably made me the weirdest person some of these people knew. Some of the email addresses I stole off of another guy’s email list in college. So I didn’t even know a large chunk of the people I was sending this out to, and I even gave credit to him as the one who provided the email addresses. I think I was just starting to really use email to communicate with friends, so I didn’t realize how weird it would be to do this. Plus, my first line in the email was: “DON’T DELETE BEFORE READING ALL OF IT”. As I was informed later by the email list guy, this looked very much like a chain letter, though I had never even heard of such a thing. So basically I was a complete idiot. But I sent it out with pride in what I wrote, hoping that it would mean something to them or make someone think. For the most part, as far as content, it was a good paper and reflected the study and research of the Bible I had done on my own time and found to be compelling. The paper itself, however, was shaky in structure, awkward in phrasing, disjointed, unclear, oversimplified, bigoted, judgmental, and expressed well my inability to coherently write (some may ask what has changed since then). But it was sort of my baby (though only 6 pages long) and reflected the immense amount of change I experienced in the first few semesters of my college experience. I had learned a great deal in the field of apologetics without me even knowing the term. And eventually, I had some college papers under my belt that helped my writing style quite a bit.

How I got to that point was a hard road, and lasted about a year (since I emailed the paper around October 2003 and started college September 2002), which actually isn’t that long but it felt much longer. Much of this time was spent alone, since I had a lot of trouble making friends in college, especially during the first semester where I generally didn’t hang out with anyone. I stayed in on the weekends and tried to find any excuse I could to go back home. My first roommate was a 5^th year senior, and was basically the party animal and social king of the dorm (Walton!). I was also noticeably awkward in almost every interaction with him and everyone else in the dorm. Later in the year though, we were decent friends and got along pretty well. But I owe a lot to the influence that my friends in the Wesley Foundation had on me in shaping my spirituality and grounding me in fellowship and support, even if I had some significant disagreements with some of the teachings of Methodism, what with developing Calvinist tendencies and all (perhaps later on this one). That sort of sounds like developing homosexual tendencies. Ha, funny. Anyway, having the Christian surroundings and environment brought to the fore the importance of knowing what I believed and why, especially being in theological disagreement as I was. It helped me face head-on the doubts and questions I had about scripture and Christianity, and forced me to open up the Bible, read books, listen to teachers, and find answers.

Some of the most compelling of arguments for the Bible’s truth for me were those of a more traditional, evidential approach, a la Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel type thinkers that argue for the evidence of Christianity, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and biblical inerrancy. McDowell’s The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (that my mom bought me in high school) was an instrumental guide in helping me discover the Bible’s amazing historicity and accuracy, as well as prophetical consistency and fulfillment. For example, one of the strongest points I ever read was concerning a prophecy in the book of Daniel (9:24-26) which predicts the exact time period, maybe even the exact day, of Jesus the Messiah, the King’s arrival into Jerusalem riding on a donkey’s back in 33 A.D. (Zech. 9:9), his subsequent execution, and the destruction of the temple following. (A recap of this is provided by someone here).

Many more things like this contributed to my increase of faith in the scriptures. Another greatly beneficial experience was listening to an open-air preacher named Tom Short speak on the campus square about Jesus and Christianity at Texas A&M (which was quite controversial I might add, but he was simply a good apologetic evangelist). Some trails I followed, however, seemed great on the front end, but ended up being kind of silly and unfounded, such as the Bible code theory.

All in all, this was one of the most important and shaping times in my life, and I can only credit God in doing a great work on my heart and mind in my first couple of years of college. At this point, I still had many, many problems and shortcomings such as arrogance, close-mindedness, and pride; but it also included times of great humbling and learning about the Bible, which I know have been crucial in my understanding of Jesus and his mercy to me as a sinner. I was also still (perhaps even more) confused as to what it actually meant to be a Christian, to repent from sin, and to walk with God daily (I still do; who doesn’t?). I came to realize just how hard this actually was since I was now responsible for myself in a way that you can’t understand when you’re living with your parents.

That is what college was to me: a great awakening. It was coming to understand that I am to be a man now. No more games. I needed to put away my childishness and move on to maturity. As I was to learn more about later, actually being a man of God and loving Christ was much more than I thought I was bargaining for in these first few years. But I’ll save that for later post(s). Peace out.

Reflection on the Past Few Years - Introduction

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone through a lot of stages in my life where my beliefs have taken dramatic changes in course. By changes in belief, I mean significant adjustments in thinking and/or behavior as they relate to God, religion, and spirituality. These changes are acquired largely through interaction with others within the context of the church and, perhaps more significantly, through personal study, solitude, struggle, and sin where much of the real meat of life resides, waiting to be experienced. What I mean is that for me, while much of these “changes” were induced by contact with other Christians and personal relationships, so much of my own spiritual direction has taken its cues from great amounts of time spent alone, in prayer or in thought; or, as I have come to discover about myself, from my own sins and immaturity. I mean to discuss those changes which were beneficial, but also those that were detrimental. A lot of the changes have often been fueled by pride or by critique of others. The most significant changes, however, have been for the better and in the direction of growth.

The times of immaturity (which I still go through all the time) are laced with pride and idealism, and are greatly characterized by some serious plank-speck problems. This is where I criticize others and point out the flaws I see (probably most of which are good observations), but in doing so I overlook my own defects (which are legion) and downplay them by pointing out the admittedly more glaring (or at least more public) errors and sins of others. I don’t know how common this is with others, but I feel like it’s a constant struggle to not fall into this trap of hypocrisy. I feel I am getting better at it, or at least I am becoming more aware of it, which I hope is a step in the right direction in terms of growing and eventually weeding out the pride.

Usually when this happens (the weeding that is), I notice more growth in maturity and in holiness. For one, as of late, I have vastly reduced the anger I experience in the car, or at least I have learned how to control it better. I drive slower (which also helps with gas mileage I might add) and am more content with not getting somewhere as fast. I, along with my culture, am obsessed with getting places faster and jamming more things into the day at lower quality than if I just paced myself and accomplished tasks at a higher quality. But I’ve learned to accept the plight of transportation in Houston, TX a little better and am not in such a rush all the time. Lest I become prideful about my humble patience, I will stop here and merely say that there have been a number of significant times where I have noticed growth like this.

In some of my following posts, I would just like to chronicle them in some way so as to perhaps provide a little perspective for myself and where I am headed, and maybe help someone to know me a little better. Much of my experiences in the past few years (generally starting around my time in college) have shaped me into who I am today, which I know is far advanced from where I started. I would just like to try and trace this path the best I can, and perhaps spur myself on into more growth as I reflect on my past. This is really more like my own personal journal of belief, so in some ways this is purely a practice in spiritual matters and not so much something I really need to share with others, but I don’t have too much reservation spilling some of this so I will broadcast it without hesitation. And just maybe it might resonate with some and cause something good to come.