In the beginning…

First, a bit of background on the beginning of my spiritual life. Those who have seen it will recognize a portion of the most recent version of my spiritual autobiography:

I grew up in the Dayton area, but I moved around a lot. My parents divorced when I was very young, three or four years old, so I have no clear recollection of my parents being together. I lived with my father during the week and spent weekends with my mother. My parents didn’t go to church and weren’t religious at all. However, sending the children to Sunday school was a way for my mother to get us out of the house for a few hours. Given this background, I didn’t have much of a concept of God when I was a child, not even as some “out there” entity. I’d been taught about Jesus, but only through Sunday school activities that emphasized the memorization of Bible verses rather than seeing any meaning in them. Ultimately, I had no real sense of what faith was at that time, so trying to overlay a religion didn’t do anything within me.

When I was about ten years old, the tiniest mustard seed of faith sprouted within me, and I felt the need to express it. Without understanding it, though, I couldn’t really do much with it. Since I had no foundation in the faith, there was nothing there to nourish the mustard seed. Finally, since it was all I’d known about, I told my Sunday school teacher that I wanted to be saved. She passed my request on, and one of the pastors came to see me that very day. While the rest of the class was doing their activity for that Sunday, the pastor and I sat on the steps at the side entrance to the church. I was shy, especially near this authority figure, so I spoke very little. I let him go on about what being saved meant: that I’d let Jesus into my heart, and that I’d go to Heaven when I died. He talked for probably fifteen or twenty minutes and then asked me if I agreed and wanted Jesus in my heart. When I agreed, we bowed our heads and he led us in a short prayer, maybe fifteen seconds.

Then I felt nothing. I noticed no difference in my heart, mind, or soul, which struck me as painfully inadequate given the theological buildup. Maybe it was because I wasn’t ready for my particular relationship with God. Maybe I was being saved for the wrong reason: I was concerned with fitting in with the rest of the class, most of whom had been saved, and I felt pressure to become part of the accepted community of the church. Maybe I was standing at the wrong door in C. S. Lewis’ “hall” of Christian faiths, about to open the door to a faith that wouldn’t fit my soul. Maybe I was too young to be expected to fully comprehend what was being asked of me. Maybe it was that I didn’t have a clear concept of God at that time, and part of the free will that God gave us is the requirement that we understand at least a little of what we’re getting ourselves into. In any case, I took it on the word of that pastor that something had happened, even though I hadn’t perceived it myself. Incidentally, “being saved” was emphasized at that church more than was the sacrament of Baptism, so even though I’d gone to Sunday school, I had no clear understanding of baptism, other than it being some ceremony that adults went through.

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Now, I’ve recently started reading Total Ministry: A Practical Approach, by CI Jones (Helena, MN: Archegos Publishing Co., 1993) – thanks to Father Jim Larsen, my priest, for sending a copy to me!

In the second chapter, “The Foundation for Ministry,” Jones writes about his experience at Young Life Camp in Colorado. After hearing the conversion stories of others, Jones says to himself, “Although you’ve been an Episcopalian all of your life, you have never given your life over to Christ” (p. 21). He then decides that the next morning he would do just that.

The next morning, Jones goes out on his own to pray, and says, “Okay, God, here I am” (Ibid). Nothing.

Then he says it louder. “I give my life over to you, Jesus” (Ibid). Again, nothing.

As Jones says, “I was expecting a lightning bolt such as Paul encountered on the road to Damascus—or at least some feeling for the presence of God changing me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my conversion had taken place the night before when I made the decision to commit myself to Christ—to give myself over to him” (p. 22).

In some way, Jones and I had similar spiritual experiences. At age ten, I asked to be saved, and then the pastor and I prayed about it. But the pastor’s prayer didn’t have anything to do with being saved.

Committing my free will to God was the critical act.

As with Jones’ experience, I had already committed myself to God in the initial act of asking to be saved.