Sometimes, it occurs to me that I would be better off without God.
Sometimes, Christianity appears to me as just a long list dos and do-nots: do not drink, do not cuss, do not have sex before marriage. Do read your Bible every day, do go to church, do witness to others. What a list. It sure does suck the fun out of being a 20-year-old in college.
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Being a Christian, I’m expected to abide by this list of dos and do-nots. I have an image to uphold. But I’m human, and I fall off the wagon some Saturday nights. Then, when people who know me as a Christian see me fall to sin, I get called names like “hypocrite” and “two-faced.”
Ever since becoming a Christian, I find that my plans are no longer my own. I don’t get to live my life the way I planned to. I didn’t plan on devoting my life to witnessing to others, but now I must. I have to go to others and tell them they should follow Christ like I do. But it’s terrifying. It’s difficult. How am I supposed to answer the question: “Why does God allow bad things to happen if He loves everyone?” How on earth am I supposed to explain to people that I hear a voice and that it is God and He tells me what to do? I’ve tried and I’ve been called crazy. And who am I to go to someone and say they should become a Christian? I’m nothing but a fraud, soaked in last Saturday’s alcohol.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to just do whatever I wanted to without worrying about what God wants or how it’s going to make Him/me look. Most of the time I think I would be doing other evangelicals a service by never witnessing to another person for as long as I live (apologetics are not my strength).
Sometimes I think back to the beginning and remember that I offered myself freely to Christ, that I surrendered to his will. Then I ask myself, “Now, why did you do that?” I wonder why anyone would want to be a Christian.
Then I remember…
Without God I am nothing. God and the plans He has made for me give me an identity and a worth I could never have while living for myself. Usually, I come to the conclusion that what God wants to do with my life exceeds all that I could ever dream or expect. And I remind myself that God’s plans are always better in the end because they really are. Then I take comfort in knowing that my future is not up to me but the One who created this earth to rotate perfectly on an axis around the sun. He planned ahead to create seasons on Earth and He will do the same with me.
I remember that God is not a legalist and that I am not bound to any law but I am under grace. I remember that it is not my sin that defines me, but the work of Christ in me. With Christ, I experience the truest form of freedom that no plan of rebellion can imitate. This is because Christ died not only so that my sins could be forgiven, but so that I would no longer be enslaved to sin (Romans 6). I am not a slave to fear, anger, malice, hate, or sexual immorality. And I am certainly no slave to my culture, particularly Saturday night in Athens culture. This is freedom.
Then, at last, I remember that with all of this comes the promise of eternal life with my Creator and Deliverer. One day, and for the rest of time, I’ll be living in total awe, admiration, reverence, and abandonment for the God who loves me enough to give me a future, a hope, an identity, and a love too deep for words.
Then I ask myself … who wouldn’t want to be a Christian?
