Every Other Morning

Let me start with a confession and work backwards. I haven’t prayed in years. Not a real, meaningful prayer anyhow. Not since I don’t know when. Nor have I set foot inside of a church in years. Not any church, apart from the occasional wedding or those incidental visits for which I have no lasting memory. I also haven’t opened a Bible in years. Not for myself at least. Though I still own a shelf and an attic teeming with Scriptures I once studied, verses I once knew so well. I am not the steady, reverential man I had in mind to become. Not anymore.

All I have left is what I still believe. A parsed and inconsistent faith that resides at the core of my being. A belief in the deeply rooted flaws of human existence. A belief in a God who, despite being the impetus of this broken world, gave himself up for it all the same. A belief, not necessarily in any particular measure of heaven or hell, but in the potential of an eternity close to this peculiar God. I even still believe in Jesus Christ as the wellspring of incomprehensible grace
These things I believe are visceral. They’re so embedded in who I am, how I was raised, and what I have studied that I cannot imagine the second half of my life apart from such fundamental convictions, however imperfect they may seem. Let the atheist think me a fool. Let the Christian regard me as lost. Perhaps I am both. But nevertheless, I still believe. To a fault, I still believe.

I was indeed a Christian once. Back when that word meant something different to me than it does today. I was a Christian, back then, because I believed in Christ, his death on the cross, and his otherwise unbelievable resurrection. I was a Christian because my response to that belief compelled me to walk worthy of his every affection. I was a Christian because every step I took in the world, including a great many falls, was an enduring reflection of the God for whom I most wanted approval. And I was a Christian because every word I read in every Bible echoed the eternal purpose of mankind before a gracious and almighty creator. I called myself a Christian because I had an all-consuming faith in someone and something sacred.

But I am in my forties now. A period defined as much by self-fulfillment and self-adulation as it is by disappointment and empty brooding. I have everything a successful midlife is supposed to include. I have the perfect spouse and the perfect house. I have a job that fulfills me. I have friends who inspire me. Yet I am periodically restless and reckless, filled with insatiable, incurable desires. An aching for regret. An appetite for loss. An urge for greatness. And a complicated obsession with being remembered in perpetuity. I am as content by who and what I have as I am periodically conflicted by who and what I do not.

For a time, I thought I would grow up to be like David. Not a king, of course, but a defender of God. A devoted hero of sorts. Turns out I am little more than a David of the rooftops, ruled by thoughts and actions I would otherwise condemn, at war with the aging walls of moral restraint.

A part of me thought I would end up like Paul. Not a disciple or an apostle, but a fiery servant of the Most High. An impassioned teacher who would write profound letters and answer difficult questions. Turns out I am little more than a Saul before the Damascus veil, eager to damn the entire lot of religious frauds, unforgiving in my judgment.
I am not the fair and upright man I had in mind to become. Not anymore.

What held me back, for most of my life, from any of a dozen selfish impulses and moral compromises, was the other reason I called myself a Christian. I was not alone. I had the closest of bonds with others like myself. Other Christians, that is. They were my brothers and sisters in Christ. And all of us, it appeared, were seekers of a better life. A more virtuous, more honest life. What everyone else in the world called integrity we just called being Christ-like. Ours was a righteous accountability. We were sold out for Christ. And for each other. The whole package.

For the better part of four decades, these people were my family. My flesh and blood. Both literally and figuratively. I did my best to exhort every member of this family toward their worthy walk for Christ. And most of them did the same for me. Not so much because of an everlasting fire or some elusive promise of castles in the sky, but rather, because walking worthy was arguably the best response to faith itself. And because living a life of Christ, of meekness and humility and compassion, was what made us a single minded body.

The Christian community, in almost every one of its forms, had my complete and unwavering fidelity for all those years because I believed that most of them were Christians for the same reasons that I was. That we shared the same heart and the same mind towards the same end.

But I was wrong. For all those years.

Simply being a Christian, it turns out, is something of a bottleneck, an exercise in untethered opinions, everyone racing toward the afterlife on different roads with the same sign, many of them pushing and shoving and screaming en route. Others yielding and merging and veering in doubt. I have been on these roads. Confident and pious at times. Apprehensive and critical when circumstance required. But I can honestly say that the first three decades of my life were spent more vested in my Christian faith than anything or anyone I have invested in since, including my marriage and my career. So when I say I have been on these roads, I have been on these roads.

I grew up as a child in the Free Methodist Church. I asked Jesus into my heart at the age of five. I memorized every key Bible verse thereafter. I said every prayer believed to fill the gulf of silence between God and man. And I tried my best to avoid every appearance of evil. Our home was the definition of Christianity and both my parents walked the talk. I learned to do the same. By the time I was a teenager, I had been on two mission trips to Mexico with the Nazarene Church and the Missionary Alliance. I led Bible studies in my public high school. I prayed in circles at the flag pole. I shared the gospel, as best I understood it, with dozens of people on two consecutive street witnessing trips in Seattle and Portland. I attended Bible colleges in Northern California and then a few years later in Western Oregon, with every intention of one day becoming a full time pastor. I even spent twelve years, a period that cuts across the length of my twenties, obsessively combing through every verse of the Bible and learning to respect the craftmanship, the composition, and the beauty of its contents over and above every casual and passive criticism that it was just another book. It most certainly was and is not.

A few years before I got married, I accepted a pastoral internship at a medium-sized church, advising college students and young adults a few miles north of Salem. About a year later, I was traveling across the country observing congregations and visiting with pastors from Washington State to the Jersey Shore. I even met my wife at a small Florida Bible conference because I was compelled to be around Christian leaders who, in my mind, were fully vested in their faith. After I got married, during the upswing of digital communities, I developed two online forums for Christian discourse, one of which acquired a ballpark of 600 members before it faded to the popularity of social media.
In other words, I was not a half-ass Christian. I fought a good fight. I ran a good race. And if this were a question of religious credibility, I could have checked every box that once classified me as an alpha Christian. Moral fortitude? Check. Weekly attendance? Check. Christian leadership? Check. Everything else not yet mentioned? Check.

Nearly all of my heart, mind, body, and soul were so deeply intertwined with my faith and my religion that I was not known for much else. I saw the world almost entirely through the lens of Christ and his church. My prayers and exhortations were eternally hopeful. My studies and discussions were always judicious. I saw pettiness and tried to elevate the chatter. I saw divisions and tried to build bridges. I saw excess and tried to urge moderation. And yet, here I am, fully dislodged of the Christianity I once embraced.

I wish I could say that it all unraveled for me overnight. One tragic event that made me curse the church and walk away. One awful person whose actions made it impossible to go back. But the reality is more complicated. More nuanced. I know of no easy way to say it.

For six years, on my way to work, I used to drive by a tan marquee that read ten o’clock and seven, a tilted cross in a pentagon house. Beside that sign was a tall tree dripping with Spanish moss and the yellow bands of a rising sun. I knew someone would wake up for those services at the end of the week. But not me. Not for Easter. Not for Christmas. Not for any forseeable Sundays to come.

There was a time when I wrote all these words as a reckoning, a way of processing that lost sense of religion, for myself and so many others. But enough time, enough years have now passed that I can comfortably admit that I am at peace with the void, that I am content being absent, that while I am restless to serve the world in the manner of grace I was raised, I no longer feel tethered to the institutions that once introduced me to grace. And I’m certain, as God is my witness, that I am not alone in the evolution of this post-religious calm, even while I concede a life of ongoing imperfection.

My best to those attending services on Easter, as well as those who now stay home, those now loosely tied to the memories of a life they once lived, but no longer desire.