:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I grew up attending several conservative Protestant churches. They weren’t bad places to learn about Jesus.

For the most part the people I met there sincerely loved God, prayed, and read scripture. I don’t have any entertaining stories about tyrannical pastors. My pastors over the years have been friends and mentors.

However, there was this overall vibe or driving force among us in the conservative churches I grew up in. I can’t point to any one enforcer off the top of my head, but then again, perhaps we were all enforcers. In fact, that’s probably what made this vibe so troubling.

The vibe I felt was fear.

We were all afraid of being exposed as sinner, of being unfaithful to scripture, of being condemned for our worship preferences, of being singled out because of our doubts, and a list of other offenses that grew longer the more conservative you became. I attended this one fundamentalist church in my Jr. High years full of kind people, but they had the strangest list of rules against things such as not going to see movies in public since someone may see you in the theater and think you’re there to watch porn or something.

Don’t get me started on the Harry Potter books.

There are thousands upon thousands of Christians like me who grew up in relatively good churches but were surrounded by this vibe of fear and control. The worst churches actively use fear for their agendas or at least incorporate fear-based campaigns from other organizations that mangle the banner of Christ for their own gain.

The consequences of fear can be devastating.

The Either/Or Dilemma of Christianity and Fear

Some Christians think of fear as a necessary component of Christianity.

We fear God to a certain degree, but not because he’s this angry deity who wants to crush us.

We respect our elders and leaders, but not because they have the authority to judge our hearts or to excommunicate us.

We care for one another, but not because we don’t want our friends to think we’re faking our devotion to Christ.

Some of us are naturally fearful, while others have been trained to fear what others may think. Everyone in the body of Christ because a secret agent who may turn us in at any moment because we see everything through the lens of fear.

In that case, some think the only option is to flee Christianity altogether.

In all of our hand-wringing over the many folks who are fleeing Christianity, I’ve heard a lot of people ask, “How can we get them back?” However, the most important question is, “What are they running from?”

My suspicion is that while some folks really just want nothing to do with God, there are plenty of others who have only experienced God through fear and the only relief they can find is running from God.

Christians Acting Out of Pain

Others carry the pain of their fears and disappointments. They want to stick with God, but then they let that pain cloud how they interact with others, worship God, and view Christianity in general.

This has been my path over the years. If you grow up with the fear-based version of Christianity for long enough and you uncover it as a fraud, you feel like someone just pulled a destructive prank on you. I remember being angry about all of the struggles I had over things like whether drums or music were evil, whether the world was about to end, and whether or not I was predestined for heaven or hell.

When I discovered that Christianity didn’t have to be clouded by all of that fear, I reacted out of the pain caused by fear. My early days of blogging were filled with a lot of deconstruction and ranting against fear-based Christianity, which only caused more pain and alienated me from people.

I didn’t choose healthy ways of processing my fear at first. I was so dug in on the defensive against fear-based Christianity, that I only knew how to attack it and fear it. I needed a better alternative.

Erasing Fear with Love, Acceptance, and Vulnerability

When people talk about God’s grace and love, I think that folks with my conservative background fear (there’s that word again) that we’re delving into an anything-goes morality where jolly grandfather god just winks at us while we sin. We see a lot of messy people talking about God’s grace, and we wonder if there’s any power for actual deliverance from sin.

You see, deep down we don’t want to remain where we are. We all know we have problems. We all want to be fixed. And so easy grace without deliverance from sin seems like a weak alternative, especially if you’ve been in the grips of fear’s power.

The power of God’s grace is radical acceptance paired with unmatched power to save us.

The God who first sought out Adam and Eve after they’d sinned and who forgave his executioners even as he died on the cross is more than willing to handle our imperfections and fears.

What’s crazy about Christianity is that I’ve actually learned that certain things I used to think of as sins are not actually sins, while other things that I thought were fine, are now sins. That means God accepted me as an imperfect person, but he is teaching me his ways.

I don’t have to live in fear of his judgment because God is committed to the process of redemption.

I don’t have to worry about rules and regulations because his Spirit is able to guide and convict.

I don’t have to fear the rejection of others because I’m already accepted into God’s family.

There were glimpses and tastes of God’s grace, acceptance, and joy in my early days as a Christian. Even as the rules were piled on, a loving God continued to reach out to me.

I have learned that I don’t have to carry my pain around anymore. Because when you carry around pain, that’s all you have to give others. God’s love can heal our pain and erase our fears.

When we carry God’s love, we have a gift worth sharing.