Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

I was raised in an environment of revivalism. My grandfather taught a spirituality called “the victorious Christian life” which asserted that a Christian could surrender so fully to God that they would stop sinning. He died well before I was born, but my father carried on that legacy, shaping all of my childhood environment through his presidency at the Christian college campus where we lived as well as the all-summer camp and private high school we attended. My father, who was more aware of his shortcomings, could not live up to his father’s standards and trimmed the spiritual expectations down to match his own sense of moral accomplishment: living without intentional sinning. He continued to call it “the victorious Christian life” and constantly challenged others to recommitment to this higher level at his college and summer conference center (similar spiritualities were labled “higher life,” “deeper life,” and “Spirit-filled living”) His reimagined theology commonly resulted in followers either doubting often their status as a victorious Christian or downplaying their failures as unintentional (so it didn’t “count,” and they did not lose their status or need a life recommitment). Dad had various ways to label a failure as unintentional. So if he were wrongfully angry, he marked it unintentional until he recognized it as sinful, then he could choose to stop being angry and keep the status of “victorious Christian.” He could snap at his children unintentionally (“in the heat of the moment”), but then “come to himself” and make it right and so not lose his standing as a victorious Christian. Lack of self-awareness in this framework became subconsciously a bonus rather than a flaw. Making right choices was naturally core to this theology as was the laser focus on right behavior rather than the underlying causes over which one had little direct control.

My father was quite limited in his self-reflection, both by temperament and by choice–I expect that was necessary for maintaining his sense of spiritual success. However, I was born with a reflective temperament. I had no means of escaping deep self-awareness. Knowing all that went on below the surface, I had no way to separate “intentional” from “unintentional.” When I was angry, I was fully aware from the start that I was angry. Respecting my own feelings would have required me to regularly choose for myself, which was called “selfishness.” I therefore had to learn to ignore, minimize and override my feelings, to basically learn to reject and hate who I was. God who created my feelings judged me for having those feelings–fear was a lack of faith, sadness was ingratitude, anger had to be “righteous.” This was terribly dis-integrating for me, but with many years of intense effort, I finally pulled it off, successfully outrunning my shame… until it finally caught up with me. The fake god who shamed me overplayed his hand, crushing me, and so drove me into the arms of the God of all grace. I finally realized that “growing in grace” was not about meeting higher standards, but about embracing unmerited love.

But one’s childhood is not so easily outgrown. I know this from the judgments that still claw at my heart after 25 years of opening myself to grace. Naturally my temperament (what the old Greeks would call melancholy) inclines me towards this. It is a long journey of learning to foster the unique beauty that springs from this DNA, to embrace what troubles me until it rises into the glory of its creation. I wish us all hope on this difficult, rewarding journey and may whatever spirituality you embrace be a sail and not an anchor.