"I am a born-again Christian."
For a good part of my life, that has been a very difficult concept for me to grasp. Admittedly, I am not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I'm not a complete idiot either (IMHO). Yet with respect to the idea of being a born-again Christian, especially in the affluent, gospel hardened West, there is such a conflicting range of responses and opinions, not to mention claims, that at some point it all just converges into sort of a meaningless white noise. Genuine or otherwise, the term born-again Christian becomes something of an iconic phrase that simply blends into the background, losing all real significance. At least it did for me.
If you talk to many Christians, you will undoubtedly run across those who will seek an opportunity to tell their story of how they came to faith. Christians call this their
testimony. Whether it happened last week, or fifty years ago, many wear it like a badge and are prepared to recount their own personal
road to Damascus at the drop of a hat. Some of these stories are quite dramatic, others are warm, heartfelt tales of human compassion and irony. Of these, the ones that are at once the most appealing (and often times the hardest to believe), are the ones where people's lives have seemingly changed overnight: God swooped into their life, fixed everything, lifted them up, and they have been riding the crest of that wave ever since. You know, kind of like winning the lottery, only with a longer payout.
In 1975 I was sixteen years old. We had moved from Omaha to Dallas the previous year and my Mom, through some very odd circumstances, had found her way into a neighborhood Bible study. Of course it wasn't long before she
accepted Christ, as they say.
Interesting thing about Mom. I'm pretty sure you could classify her as an
overnighter. But it was like she hadn't read all the instructions or something. I can testify to her overnight zeal-over, but most days she just behaved like the old Mom. God had swooped in alright, but I was certain that He hadn't finished the job. In fact, It was difficult to say whether things hadn't gotten worse. It seemed that she was right more often than she used to be, and there was the matter of this shiny new spiritual hammer she had with which to prove it.
Mom immediately insisted that the whole family fall into formation, guided by the vapor trail of her Christian zeal. At the very least, weekly church attendance had been declared as mandatory. Based on my observations of Mom and others, one of the of the distinct advantages which the overnighter has in their favor is the
deer in headlights response of the bewildered family members. I suspect that in most cases, a certain fatalistic pragmatism kicks in. With us, it was pragmatism bourne of the knowledge that certain very dark aspects of the Christian maxim, "not perfect, but forgiven" could easily surface at those unfortunate times when we failed to see the light, or at least failed to agree that the light, that my mother suddenly saw with such clarity, did in fact exist.
I had a car by then and had managed permission to drive myself to church. I was actually pretty good with respect to the part about getting to church, but upon entering the church parking lot, I have to admit that I only made it into the building about half the time. I spent the other half cruising the local neighborhood, and supporting the local donut shop, though looking back, I'm not certain that the donut shop owner always saw it that way.
One particular Sunday in 1975, I had actually made it in to the 11:00 service. I say
one particular Sunday because I sort of recall that it was a particular day and can reasonably narrow it down to a Sunday by context. Other than that, this really doesn't qualify as a badge story; certainly not an overnighter. Many overnighters can tell you down to the minute when they accepted Christ. For me, I am saying 1975 because I
think it was 1975. To be perfectly honest, as I suppose one must be about these things, I really need to allow a fudge factor of plus or minus about a year. This isn't an allusion to drug use or anything, I just don't remember. I can conjure up a vague recollection of where I was sitting in church that day, but after seeing how people on the Discovery Channel can be coaxed into false memories under hypnosis, I think I'll just stand pat on the fact that I was there.
I know this is beginning to sound very pathetic, but quite frankly, I can't say that I remember any specific part of the message that day that caught my attention. The only thing I really
do remember is that for whatever reason, whatever year it really was, at the end of the message when the Pastor made the offer, "If any of you have not ... ", you know the one I'm talking about. When he said that, I decided, "What the heck, I don't want to go to Hell", and I joined in and said it with him. That was the day I hopped off of the fence and repeated, word for word, along with the Pastor, what I still refer to as the 'Fire Insurance Prayer', and that was it.
No really, that was it. That's kind of my point. No bells, no sirens, no angelic visions, no instant peace and joy. I certainly didn't feel any more holy. Of course I have to admit that, not really knowing what holy meant, I wouldn't have recognized holy if it had crawled up my leg.
The point is, that for all intents and purposes, nothing had changed; at least not that I could tell. My church attendance certainly didn't improve. It was still a flip of a coin as to whether it would be the Pastor or the donut shop owner telling me what a loser I was. And that was the very odd thing about it all. Call it sixteen-year-old stupid, or call it simple naivete, but after saying the prayer that day, I had kind of expected ... I don't know ... a parade or something. My expectation was that after saying the prayer you were supposed to be somehow less confused, but that was clearly not the case. I thought, "
Is this something that you could do, but have it just not stick?" This really bugged me. I had said the prayer that
freeking anyone can say and get saved, and had apparently screwed it up!
The more I thought about it, the more doubt crept in. What if this whole thing was just a sham on the order of Santa Claus for grown ups? I half expected people to jump out of the bushes and yell, Surprise! and let me in on the joke; followed by everybody eating cake and relating their story about when they found out that Christianity was just a sham. On the other hand, maybe I just wasn't doing something right when I said the prayer. Maybe it just took several attempts, I thought. Like passing the bar exam or something.
As I said, after all of that my church attendance really didn't go up, but whenever I did make it into church, just to be sure, and for some time thereafter, I would repeat the prayer again with the Pastor ...
