Being a Christian

I was raised in a Christian home. My family worshipped at the Reformed Church. For those who are not familiar with that flavour of church - it was established by Dutch immigrants. They are very conservative, follow various Catechisms and base a lot of their faith on Calvinist - Lutheran philosophies. In a nut shell.

Looking back, I always believed there was a God. I loved the creation story and just knew that I knew that this is how the world came to be. I loved Sunday school and earned lots of rulers and stickers for remembering memory verses and I particularly enjoyed the colourful booklets we were given each week.

When I was ten, I was allowed to join the girls’ group run by the church, it was called ‘Calvinettes’ - I did not think it was at all amusing, for some reason my husband still laughs and thinks that this a hilarious name for a girls' group. I thought it was an honour. I loved it. I loved the uniform, the scarf, the badges, the singing, the creed - the whole thing. And I learnt more about God.

When I was 16 I stood before my church and my friends (and the cute guy I was dating) and did my ‘Confession of Faith’ which was the culmination of a couple of months of intense bible studies with the Pastor. It was a proud day for me, and my parents, as I was able to publicly declare my faith.

Throughout my teens and twenties I was part of various churches and married that cute guy who was at my Confession of Faith. We moved between Baptist churches and Pentecostal churches and learnt lots of things. Some of the things we learnt were great, like grace and forgiveness and how God cares about every detail of our lives and about healing. Some of the things we learnt were not so great, like how Christians can be weird, spiteful, hurtful, wicked and down right juvenile. I went through a period of time, and I am still not sure if I am through it, where I could not say that I was a Christian - I tell people I follow Christ, because Christians can be down right awful.

So, I am the classic Christian right? Pfft.

We are doing a series of studies at church at the moment on the parable of the prodigal son (The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller). It has been great, but something has been grating on my heart. I thought the story was about a son who wanted money, asked his father for it, got it, squandered it and then found himself having to ask for his father’s forgiveness. I thought it was a story of how we take our Godly inheritance and squander it and only when we have nothing, do we come back to God. The lesson being, stay close to God.

But, no. There is the older brother. He stays at home. He carefully watches his father and how he manages his remaining inheritance. The younger brother is seen as the wayward vagabond who squanders what he is given. The older brother is seen as the legalistic one, he stays at home and is obedient to his father. 


This can be taken further. The younger son is rebellious because he leaves and lives an immoral life, but the older son is rebellious in that he stays but only cares about what is going to be left to him. In a church context, this may mean forgiveness, or heaven.  Ouch, this is starting to hit home....

I have started seeing how much I demand from God and how much I squander the wealth of things he has given me. I live my life the way that I want, but tell people I go to church and that I do 'this and that' for God. In reality, the things I do fit nicely into my week, I schedule them and really do not much more than my fair share. In a lot of ways I am a pew warmer. 

It is easy to look down our legalistic, religious noses at those people who are not ‘saved’ or who don’t go to church. It is easy to think that we are better than others because we go to church and pay our tithes. But, are we squandering what God has given us on the other six days a week? 


I sometimes wonder if the younger son became closer to his father because for a time, he was away from his father... I sometimes wish, in a would never wish it in a thousand years kind of way, that I knew what this felt like. I have always gone to church, I have always believed and have always believed God loves me. What a luxury, what a blessing. But can this hinder me from fully knowing and seeking out God?

The series continues and I am hoping to hear more about this and come up with some real life things I can do to be more real with God and myself. Stay tuned.