Sia: The Church of What’s Happening Now

When I was five my dad, a pastor, took me down to his office to play while he worked. Normally I would run around the halls of the church or go in the dark sanctuary and roll down the aisle as fast as I could until hitting a pew.

We didn’t get out much.

This particular night though, my dad set up a movie called the Jesus film.  He went into his office to work and was going to turn it off before they showed Jesus being crucified.  True to form, my father kept working and I saw the entire thing.

I remember it very clearly.

I started crying, not out of fear but because I felt like I knew this man on the screen. And I felt like he loved me more than anyone else in the whole world. Maybe you think I was indoctrinated as a little five year old (you are entitled to think that), but all I can tell you is what I know I experienced and understood.

Then life happened.

My “belief” took on different forms.  There were and are times of doubt and disobedience, but as I have grown in my faith over the last number of years, Christ has remained the same, and I feel myself getting back to the faith of when I was five.

Since the Passion of the Christ came out I have watched it every Good Friday as a “remembrance.” The first year I watched it my roommate had to drive me home because I was such a crying mess. It was insane. I was embarrassing myself but couldn’t help it.  It overwhelmed me to see love on the screen…again like when I was five.

In subsequent years, I have cried less, dabbling in Aramaic a little more (which doesn’t work when trying to order a latte), and had a tough time watching J.C. in The Count of Monte Cristo. (note: he’s the one on the right, in case there was confusion.) I hate that I have cried less. Christ is the same, the movie is the same, but when I become familiar with something, I tend to desensitize. What a pillar of faith I am…

People often think that I believe because of the environment that I grew up in. But I differ. I know plenty who did and don’t believe and plenty who didn’t and do believe. Riddle me this?

Since I grew up in a Christian home, I have to fight harder against the repetition and monotony of it all. Do I go to the Good Friday service because it is tradition and I want to feel something? Or do I go as worship and adoration for this God who gave me everything in the form of his Son.

I know my faith of “feeling” will be seasonal, but Jesus will always remain. As intellectuals, it’s only logical to move towards the very thing one is doubting to disprove it, instead of away in ignorance.

Visiting Israel a few years ago, really nailed things for me. (pun intended.) To see where Jesus walked, to know he was real and to know he was crucified in a disgusting, despicable fashion faced me with the questions, “But do I believe he died with a purpose? For me?”  It just seemed so hokey!

If you struggle with belief and feel like you only “engage” because of where or how you were raised, I dare you to look at scripture as a history book. Maybe even pray before you do your research. Move towards it, move towards Him, and you might just hear something as a five year old, or a thirty five year old. My Aramaic speaking Jesus doesn’t discriminate.

“Joy, I love you so much.”

Had I not been Son of God, bearing man’s weight of sin, voluntarily bearing it until
of My own free will-for that moment’s horror, I was shut out from His sight with man, the sinner,
for one short space-had I not been God, had not this been My suffering—then I was but a craven mortal.

April 1, God Calling