My faith journey with God began in the early 1950s. From those first days of this new journey, I was encouraged to engage the scriptures as a source of instruction, encouragement, worship and spiritual food. Over the past five decades that process with the Bible has been a long term, ever-changing experience. Even though its content never changes, this book has seemed as six different books in my journey.
1. Cute Ideas
Or, as I was firmly informed, they are what Christians call memory verses. These selected texts are chunks of revealed truth about God’s kingdom on earth and how I was to become a citizen within it. They were new, fresh, and often quite challenging to my uninformed mind and spirit.
These were bite-sized pieces of soul food that shaped my new commitment to Jesus. One incident illustrates the rich truth and my youthful zeal about each discovery. One Wednesday night at the weekly prayer meeting at our little country church, our pastor, his wife, a couple of elderly ladies, and three teens were together. The pastor quoted Mt 18:20, “Wherever two or three are gathered together, I am in their midst.” As a newcomer and zealous convert to the group, I blurted out, “That’s stupid! You taught me that Jesus lives within me. Why do I have to get together with you for Jesus to show up?” You could have heard a pin drop as they all stared at me in shock. After an awkward silence, one of the ladies muttered, “Let’s pray.”
This was my first warning about the tendency to lift texts out of their context and misuse them, as well as an alert to listen a bit more before pronouncing my perspective on all things.
2. Ancient History
Our pastor, Clio Talbot, was an eighth grade dropout who worked as a Buick mechanic during the week. But every Sunday we experienced his love of some ancient guy called Nebuchadnezzar and his friend Zerubbabel, described by folks like Nehemiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It was a big stretch for me and many of our small, rural congregation, to take that journey back to an ancient and distant land and learn from people with strange sounding names. But Clio just kept helping us engage these strangely named folks found in a hostile context, in their struggle with God.
The effect on me was that I was humbled as I learned that God had been hard at work long before I came on the scene. Patience was another lesson learned amid my new convert’s zeal to change the world, now!
3. A Framework of Faith
As my faith journey progressed, I started connecting some major issues of Biblical faith like sin, redemption, repentance, and forgiveness. My mind began building a framework for my new life rooted in faith. Or, as I was later informed by older Bible students, I was developing a system of “doctrine” or a “theology.” If the topic had been presented to me as one of those two, I would have either shut down or fled.
But I was establishing an architecture for big ideas like God’s atoning work through Jesus, how all would be judged by divine standards and found wanting, my need for brokenness and repentance, the delight and refreshment of God’s forgiveness, and the long road of obedience and discipleship. I grew an intellectual backbone for my new belief and practice.
4. Encounter with God
During college, I began to see God’s handiwork in creation through the ancient Hebrew people’s experiences in Egypt, Palestine, and Babylon, and the early church struggles in the Roman Empire. I learned more about my Creator God, his Son my Redeemer and Savior, and the Spirit who gives me life, power and guidance.
God acquired the relational traits of patience, power, skill, cunning, grace, forgiveness and love, which I had never experienced in my troubled family of origin. The idea of a good father started taking root, similar to the struggles lots of believers have engaging God as “Dad.” God turned out to be more than Creator and Judge to this lonely adult child of alcoholics who had never attended the same school two years in a row.
5. New Friends
In recent years, my Bible has been a place where I find real friends, and get to read their personal faith diaries, like Matthew, who had an addiction problem with money; Lydia, who sought God while launching a retail clothing business; Noah, who shared my Dad’s problem with alcohol; Adam and Eve, who knew severe pain and disappointment with their children; Barnabas, who seemed to be able to care for needy and dangerous people in the early church; Joseph, who suffered abandonment from his family only to be able to re-unite them all late in life; Mary, who knew the trauma of a teen-age pregnancy; and John the Baptist, who was a unique and socially inconvenient chap.
I met real people who live in struggling families and experience difficult, everyday jobs. They are not distant super saints who we can only admire from a distance but never emulate. I slowly realized that I am not the worst follower that ever stumbled, fell, and started over, only to err again, and again. I found that I have companions or soul-mates from whom I can learn by reading their diaries in Scripture. That gift is very special to me as an adult-child-of-alcoholics, who are known for our loneliness and who hunger for intimate companions.
6. Changed Living
My Bible now calls me to ethical living and action. The Hebrew prophets and Jesus disturb my middle class comforts and privileges. I am increasingly embarrassed by what I own, eat, and enjoy when others have no home, struggle to eat even once a day, and live in constant agony or danger. They, too, are God’s image and likeness, awaiting a taste of his love and healing. I need to steward my social privileges, and access in ways that benefit others, like Jesus demonstrated in his service toward “the least of these among us.”
I realize that I have always used only one Bible, but my faith journey gave me new eyes to see at least six very different types of spiritual food and instruction for my journey in becoming more like Jesus. As a parent and an occasional educator, I am reminded of what personal development involves at various stages of growth and maturing.
I wonder what my seventh experience as a student of Scripture will be like?
Thanks be to God for continual growth and new horizons of eternal life being developed here on earth as it will be in heaven! Lord, help me engage others where they are in their journey and appropriately add to that experience.
“Pete Hammond”:http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=1007 has filled many roles in InterVarsity, including mentor to many staff. He is currently vice president at large.
