When I was a kid I needed help learning how to ride a bike. My parents gave me a set of training wheels that kept me from falling over and hurting myself. I loved those wheels and was able to ride my bike every day. But I was told I couldn’t keep them forever. I would one day get good enough to ride without them and must give them up. I didn’t want to hear that and wasn’t sure I believed it. But the day finally came when I realized my parents were right. I didn’t need training wheels anymore. I could ride faster, move easier, and find greater freedom without them.
When I became a born-again Christian, I needed help too. I needed to be told what to believe, how to pray, how to worship God, and most of all, what things I had to stop doing in my life. I worked very hard at all that in the hopes, and under the promise, that it would make me like Jesus.
When, after 33 years, I realized it wasn’t happening for me (or for many of the suffering people just getting by in church) I began to question what it was I was being taught. I knew there had to be more.
If we are predestined to become Christ-like, it must mean more than praying for friends and neighbors. Jesus said we could move mountains with our faith. If so, perhaps I had put my faith in the wrong thing. I didn’t expect to be raising people from the dead, but if Jesus said we could do greater things than he did I wasn’t going to settle for anything less.
If I can’t do them, then it’s one of two things. Jesus was wrong about it, or he didn’t really say it. In that case the bible was wrong to have included it. But that can’t be. The bible is infallible. So what was the problem?
Then I discovered the answer. The bible also says our most righteous acts are like filthy rags in God’s eyes (Isaiah 64:6). And Jesus is God’s only begotten son sitting at the right hand of his father in heaven. Be like Jesus? How can we even approach him?
The church says it happens by worshipping him. But is that what Jesus said? People worshipped him after he healed them from sickness and disease. He never told them not to. But nowhere in the Bible does Jesus ever say, “Worship me.”
So here was my question. Why not? If Jesus was God’s only son wouldn’t he be deserving of worship? Or did he know that all of us are related to God the same way? He did say his father was Our Father. And didn’t he say the kingdom of God is in us? He even said that to the Pharisees.
I came to the conclusion that I was told the wrong thing about who he is - and who we are. While we wait for our faith to make us like Jesus the world sinks further and further into dysfunction. We need to take responsibility for our lives and the world we live in before its too late. If God is in us, it must be part of our human nature, just like it was in Jesus. I learned one thing. It doesn’t come by worshipping him.
Regrettably, this all brought about an end to my church experience of praising the Lord. The Christian faith is a most admirable undertaking, and the church has developed into a mighty fortress over the ages with brilliant spokesmen like Billy Graham. It’s hard to find anything more successful in the history of man. But it didn’t deliver what it promised me, and I had to move on.
I miss the fellowship and the community service. The majestic music it has produced will always be an inspiration. But I want more than that. I had been taught to talk like Jesus and act like Jesus. But I’m supposed to BE like Jesus, and I didn’t see it happening. I will admit that I still dont. But at least I’m free from the dogma that precludes it.
I don’t blame anyone in church. I had wonderful people along the way who cared for me and wanted to help me. They were there when I needed them to give me my start. But the spirit of God is guiding me now. I had to let them go.
Just like I did my training wheels.
