Reflections 4

So from that moment as a 10 year old when I woke up from that nap, my "conscience" awoke, and I experienced great fears off and on for the next ten years or so.  My "rapture" fear put me through quite a bit of torture for a while.  I might run back in the house from outside on the sidewalk just to check if my mother was still here.

Mind you, I wasn't confident that anyone at school or in my neighborhood was "saved."  I never questioned for a moment whether my family was.  But I actually got into such a state in the sixth grade once that they sent me home from school.  I had been crying at my desk, desperately afraid that no one was at home because the rapture had happened.  I had a slight fever but nothing much. The doctor simply said my spleen was a little enlarged.

My mother gave me a box of promises.  They were Bible verses like Joshua 1:9, "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."  They really didn't help much because I didn't trust that these verses were for me.  Did God even listen to the prayers of sinners, unless they were sincere prayers for repentance?

So I constantly asked God to forgive my sins.  "Please forgive me if I've sinned. Please forgive me if I've sinned."  But did you need to confess every individual sin to be forgiveness?  What if I couldn't remember them all?  I actually couldn't think of sins to ask God to forgive me.  Was I then inevitably condemned?

These all speak of a faulty view of God, a view of God as an unbending judge.  I doubt the preachers of my childhood viewed God that way, but that is the way I experienced their preaching.  God was a legalist, a policeman, a sheriff who was waiting for you to mess up so he could blow you away.

And I grew up around a lot of legalism.  These were people who kicked me off a playground on Sunday because it was a day you didn't work and playing was work for a child. These were people who worried about how long your sleeves were and equated godliness with hair length and the type of clothes you wore.  They were, in short, people with no real understanding of God or Christ, let alone the Bible.

I have often thought that I might not have struggled with my faith so much if I had grown up with a form of faith that was a little more informed and defensible...