Faith Journey: Part Three

The journey of faith goes on...

One of the first moments of illumination through the dusty murk of this crisis came halfway through my time in college. While working a part-time job at a Christian bookstore, on a whim I picked up a book entitled The Ragamuffin Gospel, a work by Brennan Manning, a former Catholic priest. The odd title inspired me to turn its pages. I credit this book as one of the most influential works I have read in my life up to this present time. Manning not only communicated the unconditional, endless nature of God’s love, but how his grace, impossible to earn, should revolutionize our entire life, not just prompt our moral obedience. God was not only to be recognized as Lord over my spiritual activities, but every aspect of my life, from the mundane to the magnificent. In words that have stayed with me since first reading the book, Manning expounds on Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s famous prayer:

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Delight me to see how your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men’s faces. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

My spiritual wounds found a salve in these words, and I began to try to take delight in a life of religious simplicity. God was no longer furrowing his eyebrows as he studied my every good and bad act, but was joyfully supplying my life and breath. Most importantly, my self-centered view of God began to fade, though slowly. He grew larger than merely an immanent god – he became transcendent. He was the God of the Universe. The God of mighty deeds, yet still desiring relationship with those he created.

However, with this shift in theology came a new struggle. As I learned to embrace the grace of God – that he loves me as I am and not as I should be – I found it hard to reconcile God’s justice and forgiveness, especially concerning how, as a forgiven Christian, I was to avoid taking advantage of the grace given to me. My Christology was central; the death and resurrection of Jesus was the source of the salvation I claimed. But having prayed to God for ultimate forgiveness and having accepted this salvation, I felt as if I were treating God like a weak friend who cannot help but continually forgive his fair-weather pals no matter how many times they reject his friendship. My lack of confidence metamorphosed into a burden of guilt, heavy as a millstone, bending my entire body into weariness. Day after day, I recognized a desperate need for God’s grace mainly because I believed I was treating it as a license to lie, or to explode in anger, or to indulge in lust, or to put off praying. Surely, if I truly understood the gift of grace, I would not need it to the extent that I did. And so, as in my days as a teenager, I doubted my salvation. Surely a real Christian in my situation would have come to an understanding about how to live both obediently and effectively, growing beyond a need for so much grace. This road of life was as spastically up and down as an EKG, where from each mountaintop experience of grace I would plummet into valleys of guilt.

It was not until after I graduated from college and began serving as a missionary in New England that I reclaimed a measure of equilibrium. It was during a cold winter in Northboro, Massachusetts when I experienced the most poignant of subtle revelations ...

To be concluded...