Some years back, a man named Brennan Manning wrote a book titled The Ragamuffin Gospel, which I am currently reading. Manning died in April of this year, but before he died, he co-authored a fiction book based on the idea of The Ragamuffin Gospel. The fiction book is titled The Prodigal, a Ragamuffin Story. It is intended to be a modern version of The Prodigal Son story that is in the Bible.
Have you ever read a book that you felt was written for you? That is the case with The Prodigal book. The other guy who is the other half of the writing duo for the book, Greg Garrett, wrote the foreword for the book. Its long, so I am not going to put it all here, just the part that really hit me. It describes my experience to a T, and is something I could have written:
"I was raised by loving parents in a legalistic and not particularly grace-blessed corner of the church. Although there were many good people, a lot of great music, and a ton of great food in our tradition, what I absorbed from worship more than anything else, was my own worthlessness. If God loved me - and the songs said he did - the preaching and teaching Sunday after Sunday didn't indicate that He did. In fact, if you paid attention to the preacher - and I did - God seemed to be angry with us, really angry, and nothing I did would ever measure up to his notice. As a sensitive and already guilty soul, I took on that worthlessness down to my very marrow. How could God - or anybody - love me, flawed and broken as I was?"
I have mentioned it in blog posts before, but I don't remember many sermons on God's love when I was growing up. I did hear a lot about His judgment and about hell. I remember countless altar calls where the preacher tried to scare people into going into the altar, and/or sing enough verses of Just As I am until they got the number of people at the altar they felt was sufficient. It may sound jaded and cynical of me, but it seems like some preachers want a lot of people at the altar so they can put more notches in their belt. Yeah, that does sound jaded and very cynical.
Many times I have stood in an alar call while the preacher had scary story time. Stories of people who were in an altar call just as we were. God called on them to go to the altar, they said no, and when they exited the church, were mown down by a bus and dropped straight into hell. Slight exaggeration...... usually it was a few weeks later they died in some tragic accident.
Then there was my favorite: "God has revealed to me that there is someone in this congregation tonight who is getting their last opportunity to repent and come to God. If they don't come tonight, they will never get another chance. Now lets sing 50 verses of Just As I Am as we try to force them to the altar. Last sentence added by a very jaded me. The rest happened more times than I can remember.
Now maybe God really did reveal it, or they had a feeling that there was someone there getting their last chance.... I hope so. For me, it just piled on to the "scare them to the altar" idea.
I went to the altar a lot of times when I was younger because of scary stories the preacher told, emotional songs geared for getting people to go to the altar, long altar calls held out until the preacher felt he had enough people at the altar...... and it never lasted. I either didn't get anything because I wasn't sincere, but had been basically bullied into going, or I just prayed long enough to feel better. Maybe some people lasted who were scared to the altar, and good for them, but I doubt I am the only one who never lasted.
Maybe it hasn't affected everyone the same way as it did me. I was a kid with issues, who is now an adult with issues. I was getting bullied a lot at school, and by the time I hit my teens, my self esteem was in shreds. I didn't think anyone liked me, and I felt worthless. Then I would go to camp meetings and revival meetings where the preacher would preach in such a way that it reinforced the idea that God didn't like me either. He was mad at me, and no matter how hard I tried to serve Him, I was never going to measure up and I'd miss Heaven in the end no matter how hard I tried to please Him. That was the message I got. I got other wrong ideas, not all of them necessarily in words, but they were put in my head by the whole beat people over the head until they go to the altar ideology:
1) I have to beg God and convince Him to forgive me
2) He is just waiting for me to mess up so He can take His white-out and erase my name out of the Book of Life
3) The bar is set so high, I can never be a good enough Christian to make Him happy with me
4) I have to say all the right words, and pray the right amount of time for God to save me
5) Don't hang over the altar like a sack of feed and bury your head in your arms. Pray out loud for everyone to hear..... are you kidding me? I didn't want people to know what I'd done!
6) No matter how good of a Christian I am, God is going to find something in me to keep me out of Heaven in the end.
7) God only loves the right kind of people. I'm not the right kind of people
8) If I'm not where I need to be spiritually, God is going to punish me in various ways til I straighten up.
I'm not making this stuff up. That is the kind of things I have to deal with. Is it any wonder I am in my forties and still struggling to believe God loves me?
To be fair, not everything I listed above was said in actual words by anyone. #5 was, and after hearing that a couple of times, I quit going to the altar. If I felt like I needed to go when there was an altar call, I'd pray at home. And I did.
But the way some of the preachers preached, some of the things that they did say, helped mold the wrong ideas that have had me messed up for far too long, and it was usually evangelists. Those preachers who travel around holding revival meetings and camp meetings, though some of my pastors could be that way too. I am glad to say my current pastor isn't the type to beat people over the head or try to scare people into going to the altar, but is a pastor who genuinely cares about his people.
I have gotten to the point that I avoid camp meetings, and don't go to many revival services. There are a couple of reasons:
#1 I am weary of being guilted into doing some things. We are told if we really love God, we will be at every night of revival services...... really? Says who?
#2 I don't want to put myself under some preacher who is going to try to scare me into going to the altar. Do I need to be in church? Yes. Do I need to be in revival services? No. They can be beneficial, but they can also do harm if the preacher is one who is going to bully me to the altar. God doesn't need a traveling minister to speak to me.
Jesus spent some time talking about hell, and we do need reminded of it occasionally, but not every altar call of camp meeting and revival.
I don't remember altar calls with the preacher pleading for people to go to the altar and telling stories of how much God loves us..... maybe there were some and I only remember the scary story ones.
Back to the book. The plot of the book, is the main character, Jack, is a popular preacher of a large church with a televised ministry. He falls morally and gets kicked out by his church and his wife. His father, who he has ignored for 10 years, rescues him and takes him back to his own home. He eventually comes face to face with something he has never truly known or experienced: God's love and grace.
I could see myself in the book so much.... at one point, Jack has made a lot of progress with God and rebuilding his life when he gets really bad news. He ends up at a bar, drowning his sorrows, where he is found by Frank, his priest friend. The following conversation takes place:
"This isn't how to handle it, Jack, " Frank said. "People will always fail you. Your father has failed you. Your mother has failed you, and I will fail you, if I haven't already. Everyone at some time or other will be irrevocably human and they will hurt you. But God will never fail you."
"He has failed me," Jack said. he leaned his head into his hand. "He's abandoned me. You said I was called to something. Something new. And this? This is my reward? Jail? My father dying? My family broken? God has failed me." He dropped his head heavily onto both hands, too angry to weep.
"Has he?" Father Frank said. "Has he, boyo?"
"Say something wise," Jack snapped, turning to Frank. "Go ahead. Make it all better. Tell me how I should go on a journey of love and forgiveness or something." He dropped his head onto the bar with a painful clunk. "It's over."
"You're still thinking of him as the God of Justice," Frank said. "The judge who is handing out your punishment for what you did wrong."
"He is," Jack said. "I know he is. Or else maybe it isn't God. It's just random bad juju. And that's even worse."
"Justice says, 'I don't owe you anything because you broke the terms of our contract', but where justice ends, love begins."
Jack groaned. "Here it comes."
Frank smiled and went on after a sip of his ginger ale. "God is not some customs officer rifling through our moral suitcases to sort out our deeds. He sees through the smoke screen, through the deeds good and bad, to our deepest selves."
"But I deserve this," Jack said. It sounded familiar. "That is my deepest self. I brought shame on my family. I hurt my wife, my church. Myself. I deserve----"
"Thank God that God doesn't deal with us as we deserve," Frank said. "On the final day, when Jesus calls me by my name----'Come, Francis, blessed of my Father'-----it will not be because the Father is just, but because God is merciful."
That's me. I somehow got the idea that anything bad that happened to me was punishment for things I had done, whether I was serving God or not. I have trouble getting a job, it is because I'm not being a good enough Christian. My car drains my savings account, God is mad at me and punishing me...... that's not a good way to live and believe.
I missed the message that God is a God of love, of mercy, of grace. That we don't get what we deserve, and that's what grace is all about. That the reason to go to the altar and repent isn't to get a "get out of hell free card", but so we can have a relationship with this God who loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die on a cross...
It has only been recently that I have begun to "get it." It may take months or years to undo the idea of this Gospel of fear that has been ingrained in me. I'm done with it, and the God of Justice. I want to serve the God of love who wants me to make it to Heaven even more than I want to make it there.
And again, some of what I retained from my youth was most likely because of my own poor self esteem and insecurities, but I still stand by my statements that I got too much of the Gospel of fear, and not enough of the Gospel of Grace.
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