The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” –G.K. Chesterton
As a child growing up, I didn’t know Christianity existed. I knew churches did. I saw them all over town. However, I had no concept or awareness of Christianity. For some reason, though, as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a profound awareness of God. I talked to Him every day and would frequently ask my parents questions about Him.
That was shocking to my parents because they weren’t religious, didn’t attend church, and didn’t talk about God. They were both people of high moral character and integrity, but neither showed any interest or concern for spiritual things, so they didn’t encourage my curiosity about God. Yet I persisted.
After I learned that churches had something to do with God, I began to ask my parents to take me to one. They weren’t eager to do so.
The first time I remember going to church, we had recently moved from Little Rock to Jonesboro, Arkansas. I was about 10 years old. My mother’s new best friend and her children occasionally attended a Baptist church. My mother, my 2 younger brothers, and I went with them 2 or 3 times. To my surprise, I didn’t like it.
My mother dressed us in little sports coats and clip on ties. When we got to the church, she whisked us inside and had us sit for an hour on a hard wooden bench. The room was full of those benches lined up in perfect rows. (There was no children’s church at that time.)
We had to sit quietly and behave while a man upfront welcomed people, said a prayer, led some songs, and collected money. Then another man read from a book and gave a long, boring talk about something he called being “saved.” He ended by asking people to walk to the front while the first man led another song, so they can be “saved.” I don’t remember if people came down or not.
Sometime later my aunt, who had been a “Christian Science practitioner” (a minister in a religious group that claims sickness isn’t real) switched her religion to being a Presbyterian. She told my dad that he might like being one too. To my surprise, one Sunday my dad took the family to a little Presbyterian church not far from our house.
This time, however, it all began with something called Sunday school. Our family was split into separate classes according to our age. There were 5 or 6 kids in my class. An adult read to us from a pamphlet-style booklet. All of us kids were quite bored and squirmish throughout the process.
Then after Sunday school we were led into a big room with benches where we sat for another hour that was a lot like the Baptist church, except in that church nothing was said about being saved. They did however, have everybody stand up and say together a lot of words that they called the “Apostles’ Creed.”
My family went there a few times, but then one day my father took us to a big Presbyterian church called “First Presbyterian.” It also started off with Sunday school. My class there was even more boring than the one at the other Presbyterian church.
The program in the big room with benches was very formal and if a kid made any noise everyone seemed to give them and their family a dirty look, so my parents did what they needed to in order to keep my brothers and me quiet. Something else different about that church was that the man who gave the weekly talk wore a fancy black robe with a colored cloth draped over his neck and they had a choir of people wearing robes.
My dad was a dignified looking man. People used to tell him that he looked like a preacher. The people in that church really liked him. It wasn’t long after that he and my mom joined the church and they asked him to teach an adult Sunday school class. He accepted and all of a sudden my family was going to church every Sunday.
My dad still wouldn’t talk to me about God. However, one night he did take the time to teach me “The Lord’s Prayer.” I can still quote it today.
The church had a “junior choir,” and I was invited to join it even though I knew nothing about music. We practiced once a week, but the choir director never gave me any personal feedback or instructions.
A few times a year they dressed us choir kids up in robes and had us sing in the Sunday service. I didn’t know any better, so I loudly belted out the beautiful words about God, without paying any attention to the tune. I never knew that I was doing anything wrong. Years later my parents told me that I was way out of tune, and they had asked the choir director to pull me out of the choir. For some reason the choir director said he couldn’t do that because I sang with more enthusiasm than anybody else in the choir.
When I was about 12 or so, the church announced that they were going to have a “Communicants Class” for anyone who wanted to become a member. Most of the kids in my Sunday school class were going to attend it, so when I was asked, I said I would too.
The minister taught the class of six or seven kids about my age. He mainly read from a book called: “Covenant Life Curriculum.” It was written to make us good church members; however, it was really difficult to understand. The class was a mixture of history, religious ideas, and church government and lasted about 6 weeks.
Afterwards we all were assumed to be fit to be full members in good standing. All the other kids had been sprinkled as infants. Of course, I hadn’t, so I was told I would have to be baptized on the Sunday I was received as a member.
That Sunday morning, the minister had all of the kids from the “Communicants Class” come forward and stand in front of all the people sitting on wooden benches. The minister asked me some questions, dipped his hand into a brass bowl full of water, held his wet hand over my head, and let it drip water on my hair while he said words about being baptized.
Afterwards as I was standing there with a few drops of water running down my face, the minister asked us all a question or two about being church members. When we answered yes, he said a prayer and then welcomed us as new members. He assured us that we were now Christians. The experience was interesting to me, but it was done in such a systematized, matter of fact way that there was nothing profound or emotional about it.
From that moment own I assumed that I had understood and been inducted into Christianity. But boy, was I wrong.
When I was going into the ninth grade my family moved from Jonesboro, Arkansas to Jackson, Tennessee. One of the first things we did was find another Presbyterian church. This one wasn’t just “First Presbyterian,” it was “First Cumberland Presbyterian,” however, the routine was so similar I couldn’t tell any difference. We settled into regular attendance.
The Presbyterian sermons I heard over those years were mainly read aloud in a dull voice. The subject matter was often about what seemed to me to be obscure Christian beliefs that had little to do with daily life. And there would be an occasional “message” about social justice.
One day when I was a junior in high school, my mind was wandering during a message. Suddenly this question came to my mind: “If you were born a Hindu, what would you be today?” As I pondered it, I realized that if my parents had taken me to a Hindu temple instead of a Christian church, I would have been a Hindu.
Then the question “Why do you think you are a Christian?” promptly entered my mind. It was a moment of revelation. I realized that my only reason for thinking I was a Christian was because I was taken to and eventually joined a Christian church. I had no other reason than that to believe in Christianity or the Bible.
Later that day I rejected Christian beliefs and the Bible, however, I couldn’t reject the God I had talked to and been aware of since my earliest memories. I was confident that He, not time and chance, had created this amazing world. So, I prayed, “God, whoever or whatever you are, I don’t have any reason to believe in Christianity or the Bible. Will you please show me the truth?
I continued going to church with my family at First Cumberland Presbyterian. Yet, from that point on I knew that I had misunderstood Christianity. I understood that although I faithfully attended church and sincerely tried to be a good person, I wasn’t in any way a Christian.
My freshman year of college was at The University of Tennessee Martin (a small southern town). It was there I begin to gain some understanding of how incredibly amazing and profound Christianity can be.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 