Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [8]
We went to church Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights. I still remember the flannel boards of Sunday school – all those felt animals lined up on the ramp to Noah’s ark, or Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus in the manger, or Moses parting the Red Sea. I went to youth camp every summer, walked the aisle, and got saved. Again.
I was always confused. Did you get saved again when you felt like you’d drifted away from God . . . or was it a rededication . . . or what? I’m not sure whether it was the church, my work ethic, or a little bit of both, but I ended up thinking that the one thing that could change in my changeless world was my eternal destiny.
Our church taught that you could lose your salvation . . . and so you never quite knew where you stood with God. I don’t remember ever hearing the concept of grace. A relationship with God was all about working hard and being as good as you could possibly be.
Once when I was about nine years old, I was coloring in my bright pink bedroom with its variegated pink shag carpet and matching bedspread and curtains. I loved my room. My bed was always perfectly made, which was a challenge, since I had about a hundred stuffed animals that had to be placed on the spread in a certain sequence. I also raked my shag carpet, starting at the far corner and going all the way out the door, so that all the strands stood precisely on end, looking like no one had ever stepped on it.
Anyway, one day I was coloring a giant Holly Hobby picture in my bedroom, and I was doing my best to stay inside the lines and make it as beautiful as I could. I was in the zone, trying my hardest. It looked perfect . . . until I made one little mistake.
The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got. I felt desperate. It wasn’t perfect anymore. I started crying and felt this rage well up inside of me. Before I knew what was happening, I was ripping my picture into tiny shreds. Then I ran to my bike and rode as fast and as hard as I could. I didn’t even know where I was going. It was frustrating not to be perfect.
I couldn’t live up to the expectations that I had for myself . . . and I knew that God must be disappointed with me too.
My grandfather wasn’t perfect either, but in my young eyes he came close. He was a leader in our church, and I was amazed by how much Scripture he had memorized. I would sit next to him in church, sucking on a cherry candy my grandmother had given me and watching as Grandpa took sermon notes.
Once he got bored with a sermon. Never one to waste time or be unproductive, Grandpa pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write. When he finished, he handed it to me and whispered, “Here, check me. See if I got it right.”
It was the whole chapter of Isaiah 53. Grandpa was strictly a King James man, so for a little girl it took a while to maneuver my way through the “thees” and “thous,” but in the end there were no mistakes. Perfect. Word for word.
When I got older, I’d sit with my grandfather and we’d drink Cokes from the bottle and eat Ritz crackers with cheddar cheese while we talked about theology. I had lots of questions, and by now I was brave enough to push my grandpa on our church’s stand on issues that I either disagreed with or misunderstood.
“Grandpa,” I’d say, “so how does it work? Let’s say there’s a guy who’s a Christian, and he’s doing great, walking along the road one day, and then he sees this pretty girl with a great figure ride by on her bike. He can’t help it, this lustful thought pops in his head . . . and then, bam! He gets hit by a bus. Are you telling me that he’d go to hell because he died with an unconfessed sin in his heart?”
I don’t even remember what my grandfather said when I asked him this. But the point is, by the time I was a teenager I was pretty upset about the idea that you could lose your salvation. One false move, I thought, and I could end up on the outside of the pearly gates