Musings, 8/29/02
Oct. 29th, 2002 03:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsyche3:01 p.m.
January 25. That is the date I traditionally remember, of my thirteenth year, which would have been 1989. Six months after I'd begun attending the Milan Free Methodist Church, I found myself being ministered at the altar--tears streaming down my face in veritable rivers--by a layman, a man no other than my adopted "church father," B. Timbers. Bless that man. He literally witnessed something that was to be celebrated by me in all the years to come as the watershed event in my life: the day I was "saved."
Saved, yes, by modern-day Protestant definitions of the term.
But, my birthdate in the Lord is freshly stamped: July 25, 2002. [--How did it take me so long to find the One I purported to have had accepted so many years ago? How is this possible? What could possibly explain this discrepancy?]
I became a Christian not by human instruction, but by direct revelation.
Hearing about "Jesus's life," reading only the red script in the New Testament, did not save me. That wonderful church, filled with so many people that I love and miss so dearly, did not save me. No amount of Sunday School instruction led me to salvation.
I knew salvation by revelation. When the One drew near, I but blinked and began to see and hear the world through eyes and ears that were not mine. I'd been, unfathomably, filled with the Spirit. I had, in other words, been spiritually endowed and imbued with Christ consciousness.
And salvation did not descend alongside this Consciousness, but came in the wake of losing this divine Sight. That is, it came--of not my accord--in due course after I returned to ordinary awareness.
3:31 p.m.
On July 25, 2002, I became blessed [enough?] to see God face to face. And I am convinced this came to be because, in the utter, utter depths of a despair I've never before or since experienced, my response was to praise God and give him his proper honor and respect. In my greatest despair, my response was not to curse God, but to love him. My reward was a glimpse of Eternity.
My point is that confession--descending upon an altar and claiming to let God into one's heart--does not impart salvation, not in and of itself (and certainly not automatic salvation!). It may serve as a pledge, a marker for some future redemption. But, at least in my experience, confession--the realization that I too was a transgressor against God, by mere bodily existence--was not even the first full step. It was but an intermediary step: one necessary to advance in the course of self-knowledge and inward awareness, but insufficient in itself. The dead saltwater washing over my thirteen-year-old cheeks was no indication that living water had filled my soul. My tears were only proof of the bottled-up anguish I'd accumulated over the years. They were a release, not an acceptance; they were an outward sign, inwardly meaningless. They represented no true inner change.
January 25. That is the date I traditionally remember, of my thirteenth year, which would have been 1989. Six months after I'd begun attending the Milan Free Methodist Church, I found myself being ministered at the altar--tears streaming down my face in veritable rivers--by a layman, a man no other than my adopted "church father," B. Timbers. Bless that man. He literally witnessed something that was to be celebrated by me in all the years to come as the watershed event in my life: the day I was "saved."
Saved, yes, by modern-day Protestant definitions of the term.
But, my birthdate in the Lord is freshly stamped: July 25, 2002. [--How did it take me so long to find the One I purported to have had accepted so many years ago? How is this possible? What could possibly explain this discrepancy?]
I became a Christian not by human instruction, but by direct revelation.
Hearing about "Jesus's life," reading only the red script in the New Testament, did not save me. That wonderful church, filled with so many people that I love and miss so dearly, did not save me. No amount of Sunday School instruction led me to salvation.
I knew salvation by revelation. When the One drew near, I but blinked and began to see and hear the world through eyes and ears that were not mine. I'd been, unfathomably, filled with the Spirit. I had, in other words, been spiritually endowed and imbued with Christ consciousness.
And salvation did not descend alongside this Consciousness, but came in the wake of losing this divine Sight. That is, it came--of not my accord--in due course after I returned to ordinary awareness.
3:31 p.m.
On July 25, 2002, I became blessed [enough?] to see God face to face. And I am convinced this came to be because, in the utter, utter depths of a despair I've never before or since experienced, my response was to praise God and give him his proper honor and respect. In my greatest despair, my response was not to curse God, but to love him. My reward was a glimpse of Eternity.
My point is that confession--descending upon an altar and claiming to let God into one's heart--does not impart salvation, not in and of itself (and certainly not automatic salvation!). It may serve as a pledge, a marker for some future redemption. But, at least in my experience, confession--the realization that I too was a transgressor against God, by mere bodily existence--was not even the first full step. It was but an intermediary step: one necessary to advance in the course of self-knowledge and inward awareness, but insufficient in itself. The dead saltwater washing over my thirteen-year-old cheeks was no indication that living water had filled my soul. My tears were only proof of the bottled-up anguish I'd accumulated over the years. They were a release, not an acceptance; they were an outward sign, inwardly meaningless. They represented no true inner change.