Another Part of the Story

I grew up in an environment that was designed to make me as "Christian" as possible. Church at least every Sunday. Psalty tapes. Christian schools until I graduated high school. VBS when I was young and Christian camps later on. I was one of those kids. This does not mean, however, that I learned what I should have learned.

I remember the felt boards from the church we were at until I was ten. I remember one of my friends wanting to pray "the prayer" at camp, and I remember being appalled when our leader told her that she didn't need to because she was already good enough. I remember learning from the "Character Traits" books in elementary school and later on moving into the Bob Jones books that only required regurgitated information. In junior high, one teacher had us listen to a book on tape of This Present Darkness, and another required us to watch the "Thief in the Night" series. Both of these accomplished absolutely nothing other than freaking us out. (I had a number of spiritually and emotionally abusive and manipulative teachers. Some were well-meaning; others were not. At one point, we had a church elder and his henchman saying my dad was the devil.) At church in junior high, the big expectation was to memorize the books of the Bible in order.

I had five Bible teachers in four years of high school. The first focused on useless trivia about the Bible. The second, a pastor, was unbearably arrogant, and he had this little habit of giving girls grades based on how much they flirted with him. He taught nothing more than the same stories most of us knew from the felt boards of our childhoods, and he fueled arguments about everything that could be argued without any resolution. Number three's favorite conversation topic was his relationship with his wife, number four was arrested after four months on campus for being a pervert, and number five taught that Jesus was half God and half man. And he was a jerk. My brother got him relegated to curriculum after two partial years of heretical nonsense.

This all makes me laugh, looking back on it. It's really no wonder I got so confused! I had a head full of knowledge, but it was only information, and I had an incredible collection of really awful "Christian" role models. By the grace of God, I recognized that. Otherwise, I would have been looking for the nearest exit. Most of my friends found the nearest exit.

I did learn some good things. The felt board stories gave us a foundation, a context for everything else that should have come later. My Bible teacher in junior high ignored the Bob Jones book and actually taught us. We spent a lot of time not just reading the parables, but studying them. He attempted to get us thinking, and he showed us how what we were reading was actually relevant for us. My high school youth pastor worked hard to teach us well. He is an amazing person. I've learned more from him (Big Brother) in the occasional one on one time over the years than from almost anyone else before or since.

One thing I kept coming back to was discipleship. I found myself incredibly frustrated that almost all anyone ever taught me was either the stories or the rules. I knew how to be a "good" person. I could tell any story from Genesis or the Gospels. I knew Samuel, David, Daniel and the lions, Jonah, basically everything that eventually became a Veggie Tales video and then some. This has its place; don't get me wrong. But it's simply not all there is to being a Christian, and I knew it early on. Faith is one thing, but information isn't going to help faith grow. For the longest time, though, I could not put words to this frustration, so I couldn't make anyone understand.

When I crashed into the concept of theosis, and after Patrick of the Mountain helped me understand it, something clicked. Becoming more and more like God actually made sense. We're supposed to be image bearers, right? There is, of course that pesky problem of sin getting in the way, and that's what theosis seemed to be dealing with. But I knew there was no way I could do that. Hello, what I need is for someone to actually train me. I knew plenty of information, and I knew how to look like a good Christian, but I desperately needed someone to teach me the real things, the deeper parts of what it means to be a Christian, rather than just look like one. Thus began my quest.

To be continued...