Jesus...

When I was a Christian I don't think I loved Jesus all that much. Generally, I prayed to God the Father, not Jesus. It was God I called to when I was frightened, not Jesus. When I felt God inside me or spoke in tongues, it was the Holy Spirit at work.

Jesus frightened me. He frightened me because I had two very different ideas of him in my head and I didn't know which to trust.

"Let the little children come to me."

The Jesus in this picture was the Jesus I wanted to believe in and love and trust the same way the Christians around me did. He was God, but he was material: If I had lived in Bible times I could have seen and touched him! And he loved little children and blessed the downtrodden. When I was abandoned or hungry or sad, I knew Jesus had felt those things right along with the rest of mortal humanity.

But the image of Jesus that was most firmly embedded in my mind, in those dark hours when I was most honest with myself, was this one:

"Depart from me, I never knew you."

A distant, judging, shadowy lord. It was beyond my powers to please him.

Matthew 25:14-30

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Bags of Gold

¹⁴ “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. ¹⁵ To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,^[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. ¹⁶ The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. ¹⁷ So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. ¹⁸ But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
¹⁹ “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. ²⁰ The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
²¹ “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
²² “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
²³ “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
²⁴ “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. ²⁵ So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’
²⁶ “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? ²⁷ Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
²⁸ “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. ²⁹ For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. ³⁰ And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

This passage, and a similar parable performed here emotionally by Keith Green, scared me more than just about anything else in the Bible. I didn't feed the poor. I didn't clothe anyone. I didn't visit people in jails. According to the words of Jesus, I was going to be cast into hell.

As a youngster, I made parcels of money here and there from family members, which I used to buy myself toys and clothes and things that I liked. I could have helped feed poor people with that money, but I was just a short-sighted kid and I didn't think of that when I had a crisp $10 bill burning a hole in my pocket. Oftentimes the rush of dopamine I got when I purchased new things staved off my suicidal depression; in retrospect these small happinesses may have helped save my life. But that would not have mattered in eternity. When I thought about Jesus and Judgment Day, I had a deep feeling in the pit of my stomach that "Well done, good and faithful servant" would not be what I would hear when I faced him.

I rationalized to myself that since I wasn't quite in a position to take care of homeless people, or to talk to prisoners, maybe Jesus would accept some other form of servitude. I prayed to find out what God's will for me was. The answers I got back were often bizarre and pointlessly punitive: an ultimatum to stop "lusting", orders to give my treasured possessions to my family members, a command to delete one of the stories I was most proud of. While I endured these messages from God, I thought maybe my natural talents and interests could be taken as a hint as to what Jesus ultimately wanted from me. I liked fantasy and writing and drawing, so when I discovered the philosophies of the Inklings, I began to think that if I made art about God and Christian themes, that would make me accepted in Jesus's eyes. (Even if I was just going to be commanded to delete my stories later....) This viewpoint carried me into adulthood with an image of Jesus that I could tolerate. I will always be grateful to this flavor of Christianity (also reinforced at Cornerstone Music Festival) for encouraging me to be creative and for liberating me from the terrifying Bible-based Jesus that Keith Green preached.

The thing is, I still did not quite love Jesus. I believed in Jesus and the virgin birth and everything, and I wanted to please him, but I could not feel affection for him on a deep level. I'm still somewhat confused when Bible-believing Christians talk about how much they love Jesus because I can't understand how you can really love someone who will throw you in hell if you displease him. Love that has coercion wrapping its tendrils around one of the participants isn't free. It's wrong.

I continued to cling to Christianity for some time because I did truly like many of Jesus's teachings. The defense of the condemned adulteress, the beatitudes, and others made for lovely, worthy sentiments. But once I realized that the factual basis for Christianity was non-existent, I let go of Jesus. My heart was not broken. I did not love him.