SJJeffries 2011
A Passionate Life
As a "forever" Christian, I have
always considered the fact that I was born a Christian much like Jewish people
are born into their religion. Christianity "flows" through my veins
both culturally and spiritually. When I
was too young to be a real Christian, that is too young to decide to follow Jesus
, walk down the aisle and be baptized ,
I would pretend to be a Christian. I would pretend to take communion using”
kool aide” and chewing gum, instead of bread and juice. Some how I knew being a
Christian was more about being allowed to partake in communion than what I did
or said. I reasoned that what I did or said, though important, did not matter
as God was a forgiving God and whatever I did He would always forgive me.
For most of my growing
up years I felt a strong "passion" for Christianity. I don't remember
ever not feeling that passion and desire to be as good as I could be. Along
with these feelings of passion came a natural compassion for other people,
especially my parents. I soon took these
feelings to the extreme in that I tried so hard to always "please" my
parents by being the perfect son. All in all my self worth always seemed to balance on a thin string as
I tried to live up to my parents expectations and the expectations of what I
thought it meant to be a Christian.
Growing up my
definition of "the passion of Christ or Christianity" would probably
concern the passion of God and the fact that he loved me so very much that he
sent Jesus to us to teach us how to be good and than hung him on a cross to
suffer such a brutal death and die for us and somehow arise again to go up into
heaven. Pretty much every Easter for many years was spent taking on the pain
both of Jesus who was the sacrifice for me and of God who had to watch his son
die in such a horrible way. I remember a
lot of Good Fridays, a name I never understood, business and even school would
come to a halt at about two o'clock in the afternoon and all would morn the
death of Jesus. In my memories and probably imagination, I think the sky would
even darken a little much as we imagine it did on the first Easter.
I was a teenager
before I one day looked in the mirror at myself, and made a conscious decision
to make an effort to try and please myself instead of always trying to please
someone else. Realizing that my parents
and my church had given me a pretty good idea of what it means to be a
"good" person, it was time for me to make my own choices about my
faith and what that faith meant to me.
It was than that I began to allow myself to question my faith. I know the questions had always been there just beneath the surface, but I
had restrained myself from asking these
questions. I soon redefined my
interpretation of "the passion of Christ" to mean the passion of living
my life as Christ taught us and a passionate desire to ask questions and learn
what that means for me in a personal way.
Kevin and Wyatt, my
pastors, taught a Sunday School series on” Living the Question”. It was in this class that I first realized I was
all ready spending my life” Living the Question” and that this was OK. It was
often disheartening for me to question some of the traditions and teachings
that always rang true in my heart but often did not balance with my brain. It was alright to question and also all right
that I did not expect to ever have a certain and definite Yes or no, right or wrong answer to most
questions of faith and religion. We are
taught at a very early age to think and reason for ourselves. In math, in
politics, even in ethics, common sense was the rule. In matters of religion and
Christianity we were expected generally
to accept all that we were taught on "blind faith". It is such a relief to know now that I can
look at my faith with eyes wide open and not fear that my faith will crumble with
the first new idea or concept of what Jesus was all about.
Looking back at a life
of being a Christian, I still feel inside like that child that was so eager to be a Christian that I pretended to take
communion. I still have a real passion for being a Christian. I would like to
know how to pass the passion I feel on to my children, kind of like a legacy.
But the truth is each person must seek out their own passions in both life as
in faith. It is these passions that make
the blood flow a little quicker in our veins and reminds us that we are alive
and that God is there with us as a loving God.
