So I was standing at worship tonight, new in the knowledge that whatever I am, I am not a Christian. And it hit me.
If I don't pretend to play along, will these people still be my friends? I don't have any others, really. Church and Life Group are pretty much the only times during which I see people I have any social interest in. Which is sad, right? Because I'm so totally fun to be around. Maybe that's the problem, I find myself too fun to be around, so I don't make enough of an effort to make other friends. Also, I'm not an appealing friend to most of the people down here. People back north thought I was hilarious, and here, everyone just looks at me like I'm a strange chicken nugget shaped like Elvis, or Jay Leno or Elmer Fudd. I mean, seri0u--
Tangent!
Right, ok. So I'm standing there, and I'm panicking, and I'm thinking... What do I do? Should I just try to keep all of this under wraps, and erase the last blog before anyone sees it? Should I take communion even though I don't think the church would appreciate my doing so? I can continue to pretend as though I never realized that I'm "not a Christian." Even though I don't know what I think about that anyway.
My main concerns are... will they still be nice to me? Will I still get to be a part of this little thing they've got going on here? Because Christian or not, this church is really the only thing I've got. Yes, I have school. I have a couple of classmates I work closely with, and a coworker. But JRA has been unconditionally accepting. I'm starting to care for people, and for this place. I don't want to lose it.
I miss my friends, and family, and I'm already acutely aware of how alone I am down here. Coming to James River gives me structure. It gives me familiar faces, and people to smile at. I get to pretend, even if only for a couple of hours three times a week, that I am less alone, that my sense of relatedness to people is bigger than a cell signal.
I start to have a panic attack during the worship music, and for the second time in my life, I suddenly see the world as it is without God. A switch flips. The bottom drops out. I can't breathe. Things only a moment before imbued with vast meaning become meaning-less. It is as though God Himself is dangling me over the blackness, saying "Do you understand?" And the answer is "No! I don't understand! I don't know what to make of all of this!" As before, the view is closed almost as soon as it opened.
I already know the end of this story. I'll fall to Christ. It's in my heart.
Anyway, I feel as though I'm in a stand-off. I don't want to believe it all, because it makes no sense. I don't know how to believe in atonement. I don't understand why we need atonement for how evolution crafted us. Wait, I'm being inconsistent. If we can look, and choose, as I believe we can, then sin isn't our evolutionary nature, it's our adherence to that nature, even given the greater example given us by Christ. We still fall to sin. Ok. So far, so good.
But atonement. It doesn't make sense that one man dying could make right all other mens' sins. And I've read plenty of explanations and gassy paragraphs on the topic. These are debates and realizations I have had a hundred thousand times before.
I don't want to just go along to get along tonight, knowing full-well that tomorrow, I'll be back at the beginning. And because I don't believe (and am in fact fairly certain) that salvation will not change your life, or your nature, I don't want to be disappointed. I don't want to be hurt. I refuse to jump on the bandwagon with a bunch of people who don't care for the facts, and get swept away in the emotion of the thing, just so that later I can bang my head against the wall, crying, "I still don't understand atonement!"
Tonight is not the night. In the meantime, I hope JRA doesn't mind having a non-Christian in their midst, attending, volunteering, tithing. Like how Brittany Murphy has to learn the lesson of emotional maturity, and feeling the recipe rather than mastering the technique, from her Ramen sensei in "The Ramen Girl," maybe emotional obedience is part of my lesson. And then after I learn it, I'll meet a hot Asian guy named Toshi, move back to the United States, and open my own Ramen shop. Or something like that.
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Ashley, NO ONE understands atonement. You're right. It doesn't make sense. Each day I wake up, completely amazed at the reality that God has forgiven me and that He doesn't count my sins against me. It's as if they never even happened.
ReplyDeleteIf you try to wrap your brain around what Jesus did for us on the cross, you will make yourself crazy trying to make all the pieces fit. Oh, they fit, but not in an intellectual way. Now, that doesn't mean you throw intellect out the door to trust in the Lord, it's just that you have to believe in something that you cannot see with your eyes. When the Lord reveals Himself, as I see that He is doing to you, at that point, you must choose to surrender and say, "I can't explain it, but I know it to be true. Everything within me says, "Yes, Lord!"
Besides, do you really think it's possible to understand the One who created everything we see? How could our finite minds even begin to grasp His complex nature?
I am praying for you. God has his hand on your life. He is calling you to lay aside whatever is holding you back. You can trust in Him. He does not disappoint.
"Those who hope in me will not be disappointed."
Isaiah 49:23
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts. As always, they are helpful and encouraging.
I'm going to talk back a little bit, not out of disrespect for your beliefs, but mostly for my own benefit, and to reason things out.
It's not the forgiveness that I don't get. Forgiveness makes sense. Though it is hard, I think we have all forgiven someone we love with no strings attached--forgiven, and loved. Done.
It's the actual dynamic of the thing that trips me. I accept that we sin, and that we can be held responsible for that sin. But what is the nature of sin? That is, is there such a thing as "victimless" sin? If I sin, but it doesn't hurt anyone, who cares? Then again, even if no one else is hurt, I will be hurt, and thus, in a ripple way, will hurt others by being less than fully able to help them. Ok, so no victimless sin. But who's keeping score? Is God? And why?
Assuming for a moment that God is in fact "keeping score" (that's a lousy phrase, but you know what I mean), what are the dynamics of the relationship such that there is this issue, this sin, and it can be done away with by Christ's death?
I'm looking for a physical transaction, I know, and it's not that kind of thing. I agree with you, by the way, that we won't, and can't know the workings of God.
But this isn't a small element not to understand. Atonement is HUGE. Salvation is MASSIVE. This is the linchpin.
I don't know that I need THE absolute way to understand it, because as you say, virtually no one gets it. But I need my own way to square it with my heart and mind. It seems foolish. And I need for it to seem plausible.
Ash