When you think you know…
April 1998. I was a freshman in college and “God Awareness Week” had finally arrived. An event our college Intervarsity chapter had been working hard on for months, “GAW” included a series of spiritual activities, meetings, and presentations leading up to the ultimate culmination of Easter Sunday. Someone had even built a wooden cross to put in the student center and we were encouraging people to write confessions, secrets, prayer requests, or other thoughts and literally nail them to the cross. Worship and prayer sessions were held in the quad nearly every night and all of us involved were waiting with fervent expectation to see what miracles God would work on campus that week. It was exciting, scary, and emboldening to walk around campus with our coordinated t-shirts, proclaiming our faith to our secular peers.
One of the activities several of us volunteered to undertake was a “poll” of sorts. We were to go around surveying our fellow students, asking for their honest opinions on God and Jesus. We had particular questions we were supposed to ask and, of course, if all went well, we would “share the gospel” with them. Ever since middle school, I’d been trained in the Roman Road method of evangelism. As a teenager, I walked the neighborhoods, knocking on doors and telling people about Jesus. Every Tuesday night, at my Southern Baptist church, a group of us gathered to go witnessing. At youth group, we then shared stories about who had led someone in the “sinner’s prayer.” While I look back on it now with jaded eyes, I know all of us were so sincere and eager for people to know the Jesus we did and for them to be part of the community we had created.
So, when the day came for me to poll the campus, I was ready.
I set off confidently, fueled by a courageous innocence and, what I believed to be, the joy of the Holy Spirit. The first few hits were easy – some Catholics, a couple of Presbyterians, and an easy-going spiritual “seeker.” Then I approached a young man sitting alone on a low concrete wall. I introduced myself and began my genuine inquiry into his beliefs. He proclaimed himself an atheist and respectfully and thoughtfully answered all my questions. I made several notes, enthusiastically engaged him, and felt pleased that I had conversed with someone who believed so differently from me. At the end, assured that we had established a rapport, I asked if I could share my faith with him. I began my explanation, faithful to the Romans Road pamphlet I planned to leave with him, and spoke for about 2 minutes until he loudly interrupted me.
“I thought you were here because you wanted to know what I believe?” He accused.
“I..I..am! I do!” I stammered, taken aback my the sudden change in his tone.
“Then why are you trying to convert me?” He stood up. “I thought I was just answering questions for some stupid poll. I didn’t realize you were here just to manipulate me into listening to your little spiel!” His kind face morphed into a suspicious, angry glare.
“I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to…” I stepped back, now clutching my clipboard against me like a shield.
“You didn’t mean to? No. I don’t buy that. Clearly, that’s what this poll is all about!” He waved his hand dismissively at my clipboard. “I can’t believe this. Don’t quote me, don’t talk to me, just leave me alone! I’m done with you.” He turned his back, collected his backpack and walked away.
“I’m sorry!” I called. “I’m so sorry…” I collapsed on the wall, melting into tears. Instead of feeling bold and proud, I now felt humiliated and ashamed. I was supposed to bring people closer to Jesus, not turn them away! It was very possible that, because of me, this guy might never talk to a Christian or listen to anything about God ever again. And the worst part – he was right. The entire purpose of the poll was to engage people in conversation about Christianity so we could have an “in” to preach the gospel. He had seen right through my pretense. Even though I really did care about his responses, it had all been a calculated ploy to tell him what I believed was the truth.
Eventually, I walked back to my locker and put the clipboard away. After that, I have never “shared the gospel” with anyone else.
Fortunately, I acknowledged my mistake right away. Immediately, I saw how I had used this man. I approached him as a project, not a person. I was more concerned about what I had to say, than who he was or what he thought. I did not really care about him enough to sit with him where he was. At the time, in my naivety and zeal, I was too afraid of any threats to my beliefs to sit with an “unbeliever” in compassion and understanding and curiosity. I wanted, so badly, to do what I thought my faith commanded – tell people about Jesus – that I missed the point of my faith entirely.
The conversation with that guy changed my life. I wish I could go back and thank him. Thank him for opening my eyes to my pride and my selfishness. Thank him for exposing my lack of true christian love. Thank him for showing me how I used people to advance my own agenda, under the guise of Christ, instead of advancing Jesus’ primary agenda, which was to teach us to love like God does.
Talking to him changed me but I feel like I’m still in the process of learning the lesson God gave me back then. It took me 8 years to realize I would sometimes do the same thing with my kids – look for opportunities to tell them what I believed instead of meeting them where they were. I realized how I occasionally treated them as people who were inadequate in some way because they still hadn’t come into full agreement with what I thought.
Admittedly, I am in the middle of figuring all this stuff out… knowing where the lines blur between raising one’s kids to be “in Christ” but at the same time respecting them and not manipulating them or the situation for my own agenda. Jesus said to go and make disciples, not merely “tell people about me.” Jesus lived His life discipling other men, not simply delivering a message and then walking away, expecting radical transformation without a close-knit companion. The word disciple means “one who engages in learning through instruction from another.” There has to be another who willfully steps into the position of teacher.
When I approached that guy twenty years ago, I was not willing to step into the position of his teacher, or instructor, or leader in Christ. And even with my kids, I have often seen my job as telling them what to believe more so than living out those beliefs. Because telling is a lot easier than living.
I am in a strange place with my faith right now and while I think I’ve been pretty accepting and loving of others, my heart hasn’t always been in the right place. I’ve spent a lot of time praying for people to be something that they aren’t… praying for them to believe a certain way instead of praying for them to become more of who God created them to be. Underneath it all, in a subtle way, my past beliefs required me to look at others as inadequate, inferior, lost, lacking something essential simply because they did not believe just like I did.
In his book, “Everything Belongs,” Richard Rohr writes, “We must never presume that we see. We must always be ready to see anew. But it’s so hard to go back, to be vulnerable, to say to your soul ‘I don’t know anything.'”
Here, Rohr presents it in a gentle way, but when I first said these same words last fall, I was angry, I was sad, I was scared. It felt more like an “F- you, God!” than a gracious letting-go. I actually made a list of all the things I felt that my Christian faith demanded I believe (like my atheist husband going to hell) and then furiously scrawled on the top of the page – things I refuse to believe any longer.
Once I let go of all those beliefs, I didn’t know what or how to believe. Honestly, I still feel empty and blank.
But for the first time in decades, I also feel strangely Clean.
And, even more strange, what I initially thought was a rebellious, vengeful act against God – me essentially throwing my faith back in His face – is now coming into focus as a weird victory celebration. Like the faraway image of a man whose fists are raised in apparent anger now recognized as the excited arms of one who is cheering and welcoming you home.
Just like that guy saw through me, God sees through our pretenses. He sees through the doubts and the fears and the insecurities. He sees through all of our “righteous deeds” and “right beliefs.” He sees through all of the things – good and bad – that we have piled on top of ourselves over the years. And, especially if you have a religious past, you can feel like the naked you is just simply not OK, not anything that is worthy or loveable or presentable to God; that without all those doings and believings, you just are not enough.
But, in my experience, God doesn’t respond like the guy I cornered. He doesn’t walk away, leaving you ashamed and humiliated. Instead, as you embrace the reality that you don’t know anything, ultimately, there is peace; a sense that He is smiling over you, glad to finally see the “real you” again. There is an acceptance that feels like an invitation to relax on the couch under a cozy blanket after a long day (or life) of unsettled, frantic clambering, trying to be “enough.”
God’s agenda always sees the person. Jesus always saw the person. Look at the gospels and how many times Jesus “sees” people, how many times He acknowledges them. He even defies long-standing religious laws in order to meet people where they are. Jesus never let the principle trump the person.
I’m not sure, really, what this post is meant to say… but that guy popped into my head the other day and what hit me was – I thought I knew. I thought I knew what I was supposed to do to please God. I thought I knew the truth. I thought I knew what I was supposed to do to share His love with others. I thought that I was right. I thought that the guy was missing something, and, instead, God used him to reveal that I was the one who needed to learn how to see differently.
I was so scared to let go of my principles, my beliefs. They had become my idols. Even just up til recently, there are times when I would have been one of those Pharisees that looked at Jesus and said, “How can you heal on the Sabbath?!?! How can you let your disciples eat from those fields? Why don’t you follow the cleanliness rituals? What kind of Jew are you?!?!!?” Why aren’t you following the rules? Why aren’t you doing things the way the Bible says you’re supposed to do them?
And I wonder if Jesus would have looked at me like He looked at the Pharisees and said, “You think you understand, you think you know… but you don’t know anything.”
And, all I know is that He would be right.
