For those of us raised in church, there is usually no such moment. It is a steady progression from Sunday to Sunday. One moment you're marching along to 'Father Abraham Had Many Sons' and the next you're donning a white baptismal robe. It is a logical conclusion, an ends to a mean.
To my intermittent sadness, my story is one of those. I have no early memories apart from church, from Sunday School and VBS, from the story of the Gospel - told with felt figures on a storybook and in the droning words of preachers. We were told that Jesus came to redeem us, to pay for our sins, to save us.
The question was, saved from what?
My parents had, and have, a wonderful marriage. Case in point, when I was about 10, my parents disagreed with each other on how long to microwave peas. Calling it an argument would be hyperbole. There were no raised voices, no smashing of plates against the floor in rage, no slamming of doors. And yet my sisters and I huddled together on the top step, convinced our parents were on the brink of divorce. My older sister gathered us two younger kids beside her like an overprotective mother hen. We stared into the abyss of our impending future. Who would we live with? Would we be split up and forced to take sides for the holidays? Would we ever see each other again?
And then we were called to dinner, where we happily ate the perfectly microwaved peas.
That is the closest I came to crisis as a child. Perhaps there was a broken snap bracelet or two that resulted in tears.
Ridiculous.
This question of salvation has bothered me on and off for as long as I can remember. People with childhoods of horror, of teen years and adulthoods shaped by terrible decisions can drive a stake in the landscape of their lives. Right here - here is the moment I was saved. Here is the moment I was changed and my life was never the same. A way out of the pit. Hope, purpose, redemption - salvation in a life that was lost.
I was baptized one Sunday morning when I was eight. In a church I knew, in front of people I trusted. We celebrated with doughnuts and went about our daily lives. I didn't say "Thank God. No more crack cocaine for me, no sir!"
We church kids can be cynical, jaded. We've heard the 'good news' so much it becomes redundant. It's boring even. 'Yes, I know I'm a wretch, thank you. Geez, will this guy ever stop blathering on? We won't get a table by the fire at Cracker Barrel.' Every Easter it's 'Jesus died on the cross for us - up from the grave He arose - He's Alive! He's Alive! - blah, blah, blah. Are there any more Peeps left?' Heads so filled with bible facts and catchy songs that we cannot see the truth right in front of us. Those are the tough youth group kids. The ones from broken homes? From horrible childhoods? They are so desperate for love and attention that they know a good thing when they've found it. Finally, a place to belong. An escape from the cycle of divorce, teen pregnancy and hopelessness. Someone has their back, at long last. But us church kids? Stuffed with knowledge, we raise our hands at church camp, eager to proclaim that we found the verse - we know that parable! There is a danger there. We can coast through this childhood and fall apart at the first professor who challenges our belief, scoffs at our outdated worldview - cut your mother's apron strings! Join the world of the intelligent, the realists, the ones who haven't been brainwashed ("You're deluding yourself" said a professor). We either cast aside the truth (I know, I know - what is truth? Truth for whom? And all that jazz...) or we just get so caught up in the religious trappings and so puffed up with knowledge that love has no place. Sometimes the ones who don't seem to need to be saved end up needing it the most.
And so the question is again, saved from what?
Of course, even the most dull saved story is salvation in its fullest. Saved from damnation, saved an eternity without God - sanctified in the matchless name of Christ who bore the crushing weight of my Godlessness on His shoulders. Not dull at all. And yet my life did not change that I could see. I could not see the course I might have taken, and the new life stretched out before me. And yet here are moments I glimpse a life without Him. A life spent without meaning. Chasing things that cannot fill me in the desperate hope that they will. Perhaps broken relationships, children borne out of a bottomless desire to be loved? An addiction to something fake in the search of something real? A life of more and more yet never enough. The truth hits me over and over again.
I was saved. Absolutely and completely.
Saved from me.
'It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.'
Titus 3:3-8
The Message
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