Note: Under the About Aleron menu item, I originally had a rambling and incomplete account of my journey from fundamentalism to atheism and back to Christianity. I found it tedious to write, and assumed it was even more daunting for the reader to wade through. I am replacing it with this piece, written several years ago which I think tells more about me than any chronological rap sheet of my spiritual offenses.
My Confession
This is a confession of sorts. Lately several people have taken pains to relate to me accounts of Christians who have in some way acted contrary to expectations, that is, the expectations of those telling the tale. I have been attempting to figure out why these stores are being told to me.
Those who pass along these Christian peccadillos to me are good people, and accordingly must have the best of intentions. I can only conclude that the fault lies with me. Somehow, I must be giving the impression that I believe Christians are more righteous and less sinful than other people. And if that is the case, then it most certainly reveals one of my failures as a Christian.
Not that I have ever considered myself much of a success as a servant of God. My faith is a constant struggle and as I have said many times, “I’m am one mustard seed short of falling off of the tree.” For years I was an atheist, and a dangerous one, one that prided himself on destroying other people’s faith, undoubtedly because I could not sustain a faith of my own. Raised in a fundamentalist religion, I was taught the bible and used it against any Christian, never happier then when I could see their belief system in shambles around them.
Now I am one of them, in a constant fight to have a relationship with the source of all good in the universe, and finding myself woefully inadequate to fulfill such a precious and worthwhile purpose. Fortunately for me, my church is composed of other such failures like myself who are continually falling short of being the persons God made us to be. In other words, we are a bunch of sinners.
Consequently, when people relate to me the sinfulness of other Christians, as if it should not be happening—as if these people are somehow worse than most—it merely highlights my own failure in living my faith.
Interestingly, the people I am hearing stories about wouldn’t even make it in my church. Ours is a church of hard-core sinners, and the little misdeeds told to me wouldn’t hardly rate among us more serious offenders. We come from a rich tradition of transgression going back thousands of years, and when someone finds it necessary to relate to me some relatively minor offense (at least compared to my own), I can only conclude that I must be perceived as a Christian that knows nothing about his chosen faith.
The Bible was written by and the stories are about some major sinners. There was Abraham who nearly had his wife sleeping with another man because he said she was his sister. Moses was a fugitive murderer when God called him and initially refused to help his own people, giving one lame excuse after another. King David who wrote a good many of the Psalms was an adulterer, a liar, and a murderer—who had his most loyal soldier killed in battle so that he could cover up the fact that he had impregnated the soldier’s wife.
Moving to the Christian scriptures, the very Apostles, handpicked by the Son of God, were no better than their predecessors. What does one expect when you have a Savior who hangs out with the lowest strata of society, the swindlers and prostitutes, who eats and drinks with them and calls them children of God? First, we have Peter, “the rock on which He built his church,” who is constantly trying to get Jesus to tone things down, avoid confrontation, stay away from Jerusalem and whom Christ has to rebuke saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” This same “rock” was not so solid when it came to the final confrontation. Having sworn to his master that though others might abandon Him, he, Peter, never would, the “rock” then denied even knowing Jesus after He was arrested. There’s a good example of Christian hypocrisy much more serious than those I have heard of lately.
It is well-known that Judas betrayed Him, though Jesus did serve him at the Last Supper with all the others, and didn’t throw him out of the fold in spite of knowing of the betrayal. The others scattered and hid out, none of them standing by their leader when the chips were down, and more than ready to run back to their homes and far away from all the trouble.
And then we come to Paul, the man who wrote a good deal of the New Testament. He was one of the leaders who persecuted Jesus’ remaining followers and on at least one occasion documented in the Bible aided and abetted the murder by stoning of a Christian. Paul had to be struck blind by God before he would even consider that he might be on the wrong path in his zealous oppression of the disciples.
The amazing thing is that we haven’t cleansed the scriptures of all this questionable behavior on the part of the human founders of our religion. We trot it out every sabbath for all to hear as a continual reminder of our failures in the service of our Lord.
Therefore, when I hear that some Christian swore or lied or was generally a hypocrite (one of the words I hear most often used), then I have to say, they are amateur sinners, and most likely will not be comfortable in my church. My Savior was a convicted criminal who was executed for His crimes by the ruling power. Hanging on a cross next to another convicted criminal who had confessed his guilt and the justice of his sentence, Jesus told his fellow offender that he would be with Him in heaven, giving one an idea of the class of people you can expect hanging out at the throne of the Creator.
All I can say to those who would condemn Christians who are sinners is, “What do you expect?” And all I can say to Christians who condemn others who sin is “Check out your own rich tradition of offenses against God.” Or in the words of our Savior, the leader of this band of undeserving sinners, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Maybe He was speaking both to His pitifully inadequate followers and to all others who would pass judgment on their brothers and sisters in and outside of the faith.
I can only ask forgiveness for my obvious self-righteousness if people are coming to me with these stories of sinful Christians. I am sorry if I have given the mistaken impression that I am a righteous Christian, for truly, I am not.
At work, I surround myself with scriptures not because I am trying to impress anyone with my holiness, but because I need them to get me through the day. That is how tenuous my hold is on my faith. I would rather remove all of them than to give the impression that I am a “good” Christian instead of the continual failure that I truly am. I pray and read the Bible during my breaks because my belief is so weak and fragile that I must sustain it and feed it to keep it from dying during the workday. I do what I do because I want to love the one who is the source of all goodness and all love and all that is truly worthwhile, though I am totally unworthy and incompetent.
Just ask the people around me. I’m sure they will say that I am mostly a “nice” person, helpful, even possibly reasonable. Maybe they might give even more fervent compliments. But would I really give my life for them? Do I really love as my Lord loves? Do I consider others before I consider myself? Do I live as Christ lived on this earth? I can say absolutely that I do not. If those around me really want to tell stories about Christians who fall short in the eyes of God, I ask them to start with me.